


Never Summer

by ignipes



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-07
Updated: 2006-05-06
Packaged: 2017-10-07 19:41:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 52,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A call from one of Sam's college friends brings the boys to a remote Colorado hotel in the midst of a blizzard to investigate a death and a haunting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [poisontaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/gifts).



The girl was crying. Tears ran down her cheeks from underneath the blindfold, and when he closed the door she raised her face, whimpering softly and trying to speak through the gag.

She was sitting in the center of the bed, her hugging her knees to her chest, her wrists and ankles bound. She was young -- thirteen, maybe fourteen -- and skinny as a rail. Her jeans were dirty, like she'd been dragged, and her t-shirt was ripped, but except for a few bruises and scrapes she seemed to be unhurt.

He slipped the tools into his pocket and moved quickly across the room. She turned her head to follow his motions, struggling at her binds and making small, desperate noises, but he did not go over to her.

"Quiet," he whispered, and she jumped in surprise. "I'm going to help you, but you have to be quiet."

She immediately started struggling again. He took a step toward the bed, then forced himself to stop. He couldn't take the chance of her seeing his face, as much as he hated to leave her tied up and gagged.

"Listen, please, just listen to me," he pleaded, raising his voice just to a low murmur. He waited for her to be still, then continued, "I'm going to wait here, in this room with you, until he comes back, okay? And when he comes back, I'm going to--"

_Capture him, like a wild animal? Trap him? Kill him?_ He stepped over to the window and glanced out. Red and blue neon lights filtered through the blinds, and the steady, muffled hum of traffic filled the room. There was nobody amongst the cars in the parking lot, nobody outside the rooms of the motel.

"--when he comes back, we're going to arrest him," he said, emphasizing the _we're_ and hoping she believed his lie. "But you have to help. Can you help?" She nodded minutely, her blonde hair bobbing slightly in its ponytail. "When he comes back, you have to pretend I'm not here. Don't do anything--"

God, what was he saying. She was just a kid. He should cut the ropes and let her go, tell her to get to a phone as quickly as she could and call 911.

But if he did that, it would only be another motel room tomorrow night or the next, another scared kid, another set of parents on the news, another blind chase through the city, another trap sure to fail.

He took a deep breath and moved away from the window. She had stopped crying, amazingly, and when he spoke again she nodded readily. "Don't do anything to let him know I'm here, okay? I'm going to hide in the bathroom. I promise I won't let him hurt you."

The bathroom door was half-open. He ducked in, careful not to jar the door, and leaned against the wall opposite the counter. The towel bar dug into his back, and in the muted light from the room he could see his reflection in the mirror, a shadowy dark shape against striped wallpaper.

He took the stun gun out of his jacket and charged it up; the low whining noise sounded like a swarm of bees, echoing against the tile of the shower. He patted his pockets, feeling for each necessary item in turn: book, knife, coil of rope, candle, vial of holy water. Handgun, just in case--

_No_. He wouldn't need it, and he tried not to think about its warm and comforting weight tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He wouldn't use it.

He had everything he needed. The girl on the bed was trying to be quiet now. He could hear her rasping breath, her rapid sniffles, the sound of the television in a nearby room and traffic passing on the busy street outside.

So he waited.

He had no idea how much time passed. The traffic never lessened, the neon signs never darkened, and the girl was as still as she could be. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and began to worry that he -- _it_ \-- had somehow guessed that this was a trap, that something had tipped it off, that it was out there now, hunting some other prey, having given up on this one.

Then he heard the singing.

His head snapped up, meeting his own eyes in the mirror, and anger coursed through him. Singing, the fucking thing was _singing_ and jangling a set of keys, he could hear it clear as bell through the flimsy motel room door. Singing -- _how dare you use that voice, you fucking monster, how dare you_ \-- as it came nearer, and on the bed the girl began to whimper and struggle again.

The key rattled in the lock and the door opened. Light and sound and cool night air rushed in, then the door snapped shut and the singing stopped.

"Hi, sweetheart. You miss me?"

He didn't hesitate. He stepped around the bathroom door and into the room with two long steps, raised the stun gun. He saw the thing look up, its eyes dark and hot and startled, and he fired.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean fell asleep a few miles outside of Pahrump.

Sam turned down the radio and rolled the window up, and the car was quiet except for the rumble of the engine and tires on the asphalt. Before him, the sun sunk lower in the sky; he reached awkwardly over the seat, steering with one hand as he searched for his sunglasses.

Dean didn't stir, slouched down in a position that was sure to give him a sore neck. He'd gone five days without sleep, as far as Sam knew, and it would probably be a long while before he woke. There was a gun and a coil of rope on the seat between them, but Sam glanced down only once before putting them out of his mind.

He drove west, one arm stretched along the back of the seat, the afternoon sun warming him through the windshield. There were only a handful of cars on the road, and the desert was flat and pale on either side, spotted with highway signs and garish billboards of slyly smiling women. _Casino. Dancers. Massages and More!_ Sam kept his speed carefully within the limit, but his heart still skipped when he saw a patrol car cruising in the opposite direction.

A while later, he stopped for gas in Shoshone. He shut the door quietly when he climbed out, then unfolded the map and laid it on the hood of the car. He traced the route with his fingers, smoothing over the well-worn folds in the paper, estimating miles and hours.

It was only late afternoon, but he was exhausted, bone-weary and dazed now that the adrenaline-fueled panic had drained out of him. When he went inside to pay for the ridiculously overpriced gas, he poured himself a cup of coffee and stood in the snack aisle for a good five minutes, trying to guess what Dean would want to eat when he woke up. Sam had no idea what, if anything, he'd eaten in the last few days.

The cashier was starting to look at him funny, so he grabbed a few Power Bars and a couple of bottles of Gatorade and brought them to the counter. The credit card of one Mr. Geoffrey Snee went through the system without hitch, and Sam went back out to the car. Even with the door slamming and the engine starting, Dean didn't wake.

Pulling out of the gas station Sam headed north for a few miles before turning west again, into the sun.

The road climbed and almost all of the traffic dropped away. Sam held the cup of coffee between his legs and reached over to turn on the radio, pretty sure now that nothing short of a sonic boom would wake Dean up. The only signal that came in was some scratchy country station. Sam kept the volume low and tried to concentrate on the words of heartbroken men who'd lost their wives and trucks and dogs and everything else, anything to block the litany of Latin that had been playing itself on a repeat loop in his mind since they left Las Vegas.

When he passed the park boundary, Sam shook his head. _Death Valley._ He wished Dean were awake to make a crack about just how wrong that was.

About an hour later Sam's coffee caught up to him, and he swung the car into a roadside parking lot. He covered the gun on the seat with a jacket and stepped outside. All the sound and motion rushed back into the world. The pull-off was filled with cars and RVs, raised voices and bright vacation clothes. An old couple bickered outside a Winnebago; shrieking kids chased each other along the edge of the pavement; a group of college students lingered in a cluster around a van while their professor lectured.

A park ranger in an SUV drove up. Sam felt a pang of worry but forced himself not to react. When the ranger was immediately waylaid by the Winnebago couple, Sam exhaled with relief, pocketed the keys and headed over to the pit toilets.

When he came out, Dean was awake, leaning against the front of the car, squinting into the setting sun.

"You want to tell me what the hell we're doing here?"

Sam reached into the car for the Power Bars he'd bought and tossed one over to Dean. He said, "This is the lowest place in the U.S."

"Yeah, I see that." Dean nodded toward the sign. "Doesn't answer my question."

"Scenic detour."

Dean looked at Sam for a long moment, then surveyed their surroundings, deliberately sweeping his gaze up and down the desolate valley, over the barren mountains and battered Winnebago, then back at Sam. "It's a detour, anyway."

"Look, man, I'm exhausted," Sam told him. "I could probably make it up to Bishop tonight, but I'd rather stop and camp here than risk ending up in some ditch."

"I hate camping." But Dean didn't argue, and he didn't offer to drive. He ripped open the wrapper of his Power Bar, took a bite, and said, his mouth full, "Ready to go?"

Sam hesitated. He felt rumpled and dirty, frayed around the edges and dizzy after so many days searching through grimy casinos and rundown motels, cookie-cutter suburbs and neon-lit boulevards, opening every door and turning every corner knowing that he was a few minutes too late.

But now, in the middle of nowhere, the afternoon sun was warm on his face, and the chatter of tourists all around was so ordinary, almost comforting. There was a sharp, dry scent on the air, beneath the car exhaust and sun-heated asphalt, nothing like the city. The shadows of the mountains were long, stretching across the flat desert, dark jagged peaks creeping over the valley floor. He wasn't eager to get back into the car.

He said, "Yeah, in a minute." When Dean raised his eyebrows in question, Sam shrugged. "Hey, I'm not going to be this close to the lowest spot in the U.S. without actually walking down to it. Come on."

Dean didn't move. "Is this because I wouldn't let you visit the Grand Canyon? We have to sightsee in Death Valley to make up for it?"

"Oh, we'll visit the Grand Canyon someday. You're not getting out of that."

"I'll push you _into_ the Grand Canyon some--" Dean's grumbling was cut off by the sound of Sam's phone ringing. "Whoa. You get service here?"

Sam pulled the phone out of his pocket; he didn't recognize the number on the screen. "Hello?"

"Hi...Sam?" There was a woman on the other end of the line, her voice bright but uncertain. "Is this Sam Winchester?"

"Yes," Sam said slowly.

"Sam, this is Brooke Martindale. Do you--"

"Brooke! How did you get -- how are you doing?"

"I'm...well, I didn't expect to find you so easily." She sounded almost surprised. "Where are you? Where have you been?"

"I...uh..." He laughed and waved away Dean's questioning look; Dean shrugged and wandered away, down from the parking lot toward the worn path that led across the desert. "Right now, I'm in California. The 'where have I been' is a little harder to answer."

"That's what Rebecca said."

Sam sat down on the wooden fence at the edge of the parking lot. "You talked to Rebecca?"

"Yeah. She was the one who told me to call you. I know it must seem weird. I mean, we haven't even talked to each other in forever--"

"Brooke, what happened?"

There was a pause, and when she spoke again, her voice was soft and distant, as if the phone had fallen away. "My sister died," she said, "about two weeks ago."

"Oh, god, I'm so sorry." Sam vaguely remembered her younger sister: a smaller, louder version of Brooke with braids in her hair and a dozen bumper stickers on her car.

"She -- the police say she killed herself. But I talked to her right before it -- right before it happened and..." Brooke paused and inhaled deeply. "Sam, there was something wrong with her. She wasn't herself. I think she was -- god, this sounds so stupid."

Sam closed his eyes briefly and rubbed his hand on the back of his neck. "You think she was what?"

"It sounded like...it sounded like somebody else was talking with her voice. Saying things that didn't make sense. I mean, it sounded like Pepper, but it didn't...but the cops found -- I can't believe I'm telling you this. I mean, it's impossible. This is so stupid." Brooke's voice trailed off.

"Brooke. Is that why Rebecca told you to call me?"

"Well, after I told Rebecca what happened, she said we should...do some checking. She told me about what happened with Zack and that...person in St. Louis." Brooke hesitated, as if she was waiting for Sam to explain, but when he said nothing she went on, "And I didn't believe her, but she said we should check anyway, and...Pepper was in Colorado, skiing with friends, and they were staying at this hotel. I just...I mean, I just looked at the hotel website, and it says right there that people think it's haunted. There are stories..." Brooke laughed uneasily. "But they're just stories, right? There's no such thing as ghosts."

_If you're really sure of that,_ Sam thought, _you wouldn't have called me._ But he only asked, "Do you know anything else about this place?"

To her credit, Brooke didn't seem surprised by the question. "No, not much. David and I -- you remember David, right? We're engaged now -- David and I are flying out there tomorrow--"

Sam pushed away from the fence. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"I have to know," Brooke insisted. "I just can't get it out of my mind, the things she was saying. I don't believe in ghosts or spirits or...I mean, that's ridiculous. There's no such thing. But something was wrong...and it's not exactly the sort of thing I can tell the cops about. They just said that Pepper was upset and that wasn't unusual for somebody right before committing suicide, but..."

"But you don't believe that."

"Yeah. Sam, it's not really possible that--"

"Brooke, I know you're not going to believe me now, but it _is_ possible." Sam sighed. He hated this part, the 'truth is out there' speech, as Dean called it. Nobody ever wanted their brand of truth. "What's the name of the hotel Pepper was staying at?"

"It's the Shadow Mountain Inn in Grand Lake, Colorado. Pepper and her friends were skiing...I don't know how they found the place. Have you ever...have you heard of it?"

Sam hadn't heard the name before, and Dean was a couple hundred yards away, wandering slowly along the well-trodden path. "I haven't heard of that one," he said. "But usually when there are stories about a place, they have some basis in fact."

"You don't really think that Pepper--"

"I don't know. I said it's possible, but without knowing more about what happened, I don't know anything."

"I just...I can't believe this," Brooke said. "If Rebecca hadn't told me..."

"You said that you and David are going out to Colorado tomorrow?"

"He thinks I'm crazy." Brooke laughed self-deprecatingly. "But I just have to know what happened. I thought if you...if it's not too much trouble..."

"Of course," Sam said quickly. "Just let me talk to my brother, and I'll give you a call later tonight, okay?"

"Okay." Brooke paused. "This is just so weird. You vanished off the face of the earth and then Rebecca tells me that you're some kind of _ghostbuster_ or something..."

Sam smiled. "Well, there are always those jobs they don't tell you about at the career fairs. Look, I'll call you back later, I promise. I'm really sorry about Pepper."

"Yeah. Thanks, Sam."

He hung up and pocketed the phone. Dean was still out on the trail, a ways beyond the "Badwater" sign. Sam walked toward him slowly, passing the college students lined up along the edge of a briny puddle, the kids gleefully throwing handfuls of dirt at each other, the old couple walking along arm in arm. The sun was almost behind the mountains now, and the tallest peak seemed cold and imposing against the golden whips of clouds and blue sky.

"Hey," Sam said as he came up behind Dean. "That was a friend of mine from...Dean?"

Dean didn't respond. He was standing perfectly still, his posture uncharacteristically stiff and upright, staring ahead, unblinking.

"Dean?" Sam put his hand to his pocket, worry surging through him as he realized that he wasn't armed, not even with a pocket knife.

Further along the path, there were a few more people, young couples and more kids, but Dean wasn't looking at them. He was, Sam could see, deliberately _not_ looking at them, his gaze fixed instead on the empty desert to the side.

"Dean?" Sam reached out and touched Dean's arm. "Hey."

Dean jumped and whipped his head around to glare at Sam. "Jesus. Don't sneak up on me like that."

"I said your name."

Jerking his arm away, Dean scowled. "Well, next time say it louder." He glanced over his shoulder at the people down the path, then looked down quickly.

"Okay. Are you--" _You?_ Sam bit his tongue. "Are you okay?"

"Fine. Who was that?"

"Friend of mine from Stanford. A girl named Brooke Martindale."

"Someone you keep in touch with?" Without looking at Sam, Dean turned abruptly and started walking back toward the car.

Sam hurried to follow. "No, that's the weird thing. Rebecca Warren gave her my number."

"St. Louis Rebecca?"

"Yeah. Apparently Brooke's sister died in a hotel that's rumored to be haunted, and Rebecca suggested she call us."

Sam could see that Dean was interested. "Haunted hotel? Where?"

"Colorado. It's called the Shadow Mountain Inn. You ever heard of it?"

Dean shook his head thoughtfully. His shoulders were relaxed now, and his hands were no longer clenched at his sides. "No, but I'd be surprised if there's a hotel in Colorado that _isn't_ haunted. Don't know what the heck it is about that state."

"Maybe ghosts like the scenery. Anyway, I told Brooke I'd talk to you and call her back. I think it might be worth checking out."

"We still have to go up to Bishop," Dean pointed out. "We're running low on ammo."

"I know. But after that, we don't have anyplace we have to be."

"Did she tell you anything else about it?"

Sam hesitated. "Not much," he hedged. "But we've investigated places with less reason before."

"Yeah, okay." Dean shrugged. "Haunted Colorado hotel. Sounds fun. Redrum, redrum."

Dean flashed a quick smile that wasn't entirely forced, and Sam rolled his eyes to hide his relief.

They walked back to the parking lot. The college kids were filing back to their van, too, laughing and chatting in groups of two and three. A couple of pretty girls smiled at Sam in that anonymous way that fellow tourists do, and he nodded back at them, then glanced at Dean out of long habit. But Dean barely looked at them. He raised his head quickly at a burst of laughter, and Sam saw something -- anger, guilt, panic -- flicker over his face before he looked down again, shoving his hands into his pockets and striding over to the car.

Dean stopped at the passenger side door, rested his hands on the roof and waited for Sam to catch up.

"Hey." Sam dug the keys out of his pocket. "Are you okay?"

When Dean looked at him, there was no mistaking _that_ expression. "I'm fine," Dean snapped, scowling with annoyance. "But you're still driving. I'm going back to sleep."

"Right. Okay." Sam didn't even try to pretend he believed it.

They pulled away from Badwater just as the sun set behind the mountains. There was still a gun and a coil of rope on the seat between them, but Sam no longer knew which of them they were meant to reassure.


	3. Chapter 3

It started snowing after lunch. The afternoon was darkening under ominous gray clouds, but the snowflakes were still scattered and few, spinning down in lazy circles outside the window.

"Hey." Dean nudged him with his elbow. "Here it is."

They were sitting on a sofa in the public library in Vail, surrounded by the quiet sounds of pages turning and newspaper rustling. Sam had a small stack of books on the cushion beside him: local town histories, travel guides, ghost stories, and an amusingly grim "biography" about one woman's investigations into Colorado's haunted hotels. Dean had the computer on his lap, and Sam leaned over to see what was on the screen. A banner across the top of the website declared that it was the "Grand County Historic Buildings Archive."

"'Shadow Mountain Inn, Grand Lake,'" Dean read, "'was built as a tuberculosis sanatorium in 1920 and operated as a small but well-respected health facility for nearly twenty years. The original building on the site, a log cabin dating to 1875, was restored and used a home by the sanatorium's founder. The facility closed in 1939 and the building was uninhabited for more than a decade, until it was purchased by Ward and Wilma Warrington' -- nice names -- 'who converted the main building, the original cabin, and outbuildings into a hotel.'" Dean tapped the screen, and Sam resisted the urge to smack his hand away. "Twenty years of sick people, that's the kind of thing that might leave a few ghosts floating around. Did you find anything?"

Sam opened one of the books and flipped through the pages. "Nothing that jumps out," he said. "Just the usual: guests reporting sudden cold spots, flickering lights, things moving by themselves. But no mention of anybody ever getting hurt or dying."

"Well, we'll have to check the county records and newspapers for that," Dean pointed out. "It's not like the hotel is going to advertise mysterious deaths to bring people in."

"True. It probably would, though." Sam turned a page in the book on his lap, scanning the paragraphs again. "Bring people in, I mean. Here's a picture of the place." He held the book so Dean could see.

The Shadow Mountain Inn was an imposing log building set in a broad meadow at the bottom of valley, surrounded by rock outcroppings and tall pines. In the black and white photograph, there were a few old cars in the dirt lot in front of the building, and a man and a woman stood on the stone front steps. They were both unsmiling and dressed in severe black clothes, standing about a foot apart with their hands folded primly in front of them.

"Ward and Wilma?" Dean asked. "They look like a cheerful couple."

"Yeah, no kidding." Sam began to close the book, using his finger to hold the place, then stopped and opened it to the photograph again. He frowned, studying the Warrington's faces, the cars in the lot, the lines of the building.

"What is it?"

He shook his head. "Nothing, I guess. I just thought I saw something."

Dean leaned over and peered closely at the photograph. "Saw what?"

"No idea. You know how sometimes your eyes see something but your brain doesn't pick up on it until a second later?" When Dean only raised an eyebrow, Sam shut the book. "Never mind. I'm going to go makes copies of this stuff. Do you want to see if you can print that? Brooke said this place is pretty remote. We might not have internet access."

Sam carried the books over to the reference area and fed a handful of coins into the copy machine. The woman working at the reference desk took a look at the stack of books and smiled. "Are you into ghost stories?"

"Oh, yeah, I guess." Sam returned the smile and shrugged. "We're staying at this place, and we just thought it would be fun to read the stories."

"Around here? Which one?"

Sam shook his head. "No. Over in Grand Lake."

The woman leaned one hip against the desk and nodded toward the window. "You'd better get a move on if you want to make it over the passes before the storm hits. I heard on the radio they're talking ten, fifteen inches tonight."

"That much?" The snow was coming down more steadily, but it still didn't look like anything to worry about. Sam pressed another book down on the copier and hit the start button. "I guess we'll have to hurry then."

Dean walked over, sliding the laptop into a backpack. To Sam, he said, "Pick up the stuff from the printer. I'll meet you outside."

The woman quickly over to the printer. "Are these printouts yours? You can--"

It was barely a reaction, just the slightest hitch in Dean's step, a small pause before his reply. "He'll get them," he said, jerking his thumb at Sam, not even glancing at the woman.

As Dean walked away, the woman blinked and raised her eyebrows. "Uh...okay."

Sam forced himself to smile. "I'll get them."

He finished copying from the books, paid the woman for the printouts, and went outside to find Dean. The temperature had dropped noticeably while they were inside, and the pavement was damp from the falling snow. Dean was leaning against the driver's side of the car, staring up toward the crowded ski slopes and moving lifts; snowflakes spotted his hair and the shoulders of his jacket.

"What was that all about?" Sam opened the passenger door and tossed the papers onto the seat.

Dean turned around slowly. "What was what all about?"

"You, being rude to that librarian."

"Who are you, Miss Manners? Let's go." Dean pulled the door open and slid inside.

Sam waited until they were heading east on I-70 before he spoke again. "Seriously, Dean."

"What?"

"That woman--"

Dean gave him an incredulous look. "What the hell? You're not the fucking behavior police."

"No, it's not--" Sam shook his head. "Dean. Come on. When's the last time you passed up a chance to talk to a pretty woman, much less avoided even _looking_ at her?"

"Maybe I just don't dig bookworms."

"You did the same thing with that waitress in Ely."

"What waitress?"

But Sam saw Dean's knuckles whiten as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel and decided to change tactics. "Look, I don't know what that thing did to you--"

"It didn't do anything to me," Dean interrupted harshly. "You know that's not how it works."

Sam recalled their father's words -- _to them, a body is only a weapon to be used and tossed aside, just like a knife or a gun is to us_ \-- a long-ago lesson about how to capture and exorcise a possessed person without killing him, a lesson that Sam had repeated to himself continuously during the five days he'd spent chasing Dean through Las Vegas, terrified that the cops or some trigger-happy civilian would find him first.

And he heard the echo of the same voice, different words -- _trapped in his own meat suit_ \-- and felt a cold knot forming in his gut.

He closed his eyes briefly, open them again, tried to push the memory from his mind.

"I know that," Sam said quietly, reassuringly. "But, Dean, you're acting--"

Dean reached over and cranked up the volume on the radio. Sam considered turning it back down and trying again, but he decided that it could wait. He slumped down in his seat, pushing his knees against the dashboard, and settled for watching the mountains through the windows.

Both the traffic and the snow worsened as they came over Vail Pass. The interstate filled with SUVs and Subaru station wagons, ski racks on the roofs and headlights glaring through the snow, and Dean muttered to himself in annoyance as traffic slowed to a crawl on the long climb to the tunnel.

When they finally exited the interstate, Dean turned down the radio and breathed an audible sigh of relief. "We need new tires," he said.

"That bad, huh? Don't we have chains?" The roads weren't snow-packed yet, but there was enough sticking that Sam was glad he wasn't the one driving.

Dean shrugged. "Not anymore. Used 'em for that trap in Ohio, remember? We're okay for now. But soon, we're gonna need new tires. After this job, maybe. How much further do we have?"

Reaching down to where he had stowed the map on the floor, Sam answered, "Not too much, I don't think." He unfolded the map until he found the right area and smoothed it on his knees. "Fifty miles or so. Brooke has a room reserved for us at the hotel."

Dean rolled his shoulders and leaned his head from side to side. "That's a pretty expensive place."

"What, you're afraid your stolen credit cards can't handle it? Don't worry. I think Brooke will pay for the room."

Dean gave Sam a sidelong glance. "She's got money?"

"I guess. Her fiancé, David, definitely does. His dad's the CEO of some big software company."

"Hm. Must be nice."

Warily, Sam asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. Just, you know, must be nice."

"They're my friends, Dean."

"I'll be nice, Sammy. I promise."

"You better."

They fell silent, and again Sam had nothing to do but stare out the window at steep rocky slopes and dark green trees, whirling snowflakes and wisps of clouds under a darkening sky. There was something foreboding about the snow-covered shoulders of mountains on either side of the highway, their peaks hidden in the clouds.

Sam shivered and turned up the heat. Dean looked at him but said nothing.

~

The snow was still falling steadily and it was completely dark by the time they reached Grand Lake. Dean kept both hands on the wheel, leaning forward slightly to peer through the windshield at the flurry of flakes illuminated by the headlights. The town was quiet, everybody shut away from the storm, and he nearly missed the turn from the highway because the wooden sign for the inn was already draped in white. There were tire tracks leading into the forest, but the narrow road hadn't been plowed.

Dean downshifted and slowed to about fifteen miles per hour. The edges of the road were barely visible, and the tracks he was following were filling with snow.

"How far from the highway is this hotel?" he asked, risking a quick glance at Sam.

Sam flipped through his notebook. "Seven miles from Highway 34 to the inn," he said. "That's what Brooke said."

Dean groaned. "You've got to be fucking kidding me." Seven miles on an unfamiliar, unplowed road with rear-wheel drive and nearly bald tires. They really did know how to have a good time. "This place had better damn well be haunted," Dean added, "'cause I'm really gonna feel like killing something by the time we get there."

"You want me to drive?"

Sam was doing his best to sound earnest, but Dean shook his head, amused. "Nah, it's fine. Besides, you drive like shit in the snow."

"Oh, like you're much better."

But after that, Sam fell silent, and Dean was thankful. Visibility was practically nonexistent, and he felt like he was driving into a white cave with walls of confused motion on every side. At least there were no other cars; the road seemed like it was barely wide enough for two even in good weather. The dark shadows of tall pines lined the road, obscured by the snow, and Dean figured if he just stayed between them he wouldn't end up in any ditches or drifts.

When the inn finally came into view -- a faint yellow glow through the storm -- Dean let out a sigh of relief. "About frickin' time. Could we be any further from civil--"

A dark shape darted across the road. Dean slammed on the brakes and immediately felt the rear wheels spin out behind them.

"Shit, shit, shit--" He took his foot off the brake pedal, waited for the car to stop sliding.

"What the hell was that?"

"Fucking Bambi."

Sam released his grip on the dashboard and laughed nervously. "Okay. We're almost there, you know. Maybe try not to kill us just yet?"

Dean put the car in gear. "Shut up."

There were about half a dozen snow-covered cars in the lot in front of the inn. Dean parked and they climbed out. The night was bitterly cold and oddly silent, every sound muffled and soft. The hotel itself was brightly lit, warm yellow light glowing through the tall windows in the front, but the smaller buildings around it were vague lumps barely visible in the darkness. The world seemed to end at the edge of the broad clearing in which the buildings stood; nothing was visible beyond the first towering line of pines.

"...Dean?"

Dean started and turned. Sam was standing at the open trunk, that familiar half-worried, half-wary expression on his face. Dean shook himself -- he had to stop zoning out like that -- and stepped over to the trunk. His boots crunched through a good five inches of wet, heavy snow, and Sam's hair and shoulders were already dusted with white.

"Here." Sam handed him a duffel bag. "Do we need anything else?"

Dean shrugged. "Better safe than sorry, since we don't know what to expect." _If there's anything here at all,_ but he didn't say it out loud and he accepted the second bag that Sam gave to him.

Somebody had shoveled off the steps leading up to the inn's entrance, at least, and when they pulled open the massive oak door and stepped into the lobby a wave of warmth wrapped around them. There was nobody around, just a broad counter directly before them and open double doors to either side. Dean could hear voices from the doorway to the right.

"Anybody home?" Dean leaned on the counter and peered into the office behind it, but there was nobody there, either, and there was no bell to ring.

Sam walked over to the doorway on the right. "I'll go check--"

"Are you here for a room?"

They both turned. A young girl was standing in the doorway on the left, holding a massive black cat in her arms. She was about ten years old; her brown hair was pinned back by pink barrettes, and she peered at them suspiciously through pink plastic-rimmed glasses.

"Yes," Sam answered promptly. "We are. We're friends of Mr. Stern's?"

"We thought you wouldn't make it," the girl said, frowning like she was disappointed by their arrival. "Dad was going to go out and look for your bodies in the morning."

"Oh, that's--" Sam glanced at Dean, obviously trying not to smile. "That's nice of him."

"Are you going to check us in?" Dean asked.

The girl scowled. "No way. That's not my job. _Mom! People are here!_" Her shout startled the cat; it leapt to the floor, claws scrabbling on the hardwood, and raced away.

A moment later a woman hurried into the lobby. "I'm so sorry," she said breathlessly, shooing the girl out of her way. "Myra, if I've told you once I've told you a million times, no shouting when guests are around. Now." She stopped behind the counter, folded her hands on the smooth tiles, and smiled. "Welcome to the Shadow Mountain Inn. I'm Judy Alvarez. My husband and I own the inn. You must be the friends of Mr. Stern's? We were worried about you, driving through this storm."

Dean put on a friendly smile. "It wasn't fun, but we made it."

"I'm afraid we can't give you a choice of rooms." Judy set a clipboard on the counter. "This is our slow season," she explained with an apologetic smile. "Our second floor is closed for renovations, and only the yellow room is open on this floor."

"No problem," Dean assured her, accepting the key she held out. It was clunky and old-fashioned, attached to a metal keychain in the shape of a daisy.

"The restaurant is right through there." Judy gestured to the doorway on the right of the lobby. "Our chef is one of--"

"Sam!"

A young woman came into the lobby, and from the light of recognition on Sam's face Dean knew that she must be Brooke. She was petite and well-dressed, with a sleek, short haircut and an impressive rock on her ring finger.

"There you are!" Brooke stood on her tiptoes to hug Sam. "We were getting worried."

Sam returned the hug. "Brooke, it's good to see you again. I'm so sorry--" Brooke shook her head quickly, and Sam stopped, casting a brief glance toward Judy Alvarez. After a pause, he said, "I'm so sorry we're late. Crazy weather out there."

"I know, isn't it?" Brooke smiled, then looked over at Dean. "Is this your mythical brother?"

"That's what he tells me," Sam replied. "Dean, this is Brooke. Brooke, my brother Dean."

Dean stepped forward to shake her hand. "Nice to meet you. Mythical, eh?"

"Well, Sam used to talk about you all the time," Brooke explained, "but he never produced any evidence that you actually existed. After freshmen year we were all pretty much convinced that you were his imaginary friend."

"Yeah?" Dean raised his eyebrows and looked at Sam, who was steadfastly not looking back. "Nah, I'm real enough. His _real_ imaginary friend was a purple giraffe named Abraham Lincoln, but Sam hasn't talked to Ole Abe since he was sixteen, seventeen, at least."

Sam shot Dean a murderous glare, and Brooke laughed. "Somehow I'm not surprised. Hey, we just sat down to eat, haven't even ordered yet. Why don't you guys join us?"

"That sounds great," Sam said. "Let us just put our stuff--"

Dean interrupted, reaching to take Sam's bag. "You go ahead. I'm not hungry."

Sam held onto the strap of the bag. "You sure? You haven't eaten--"

"Go," Dean repeated, tugging on the bag until Sam let it go. "I'll take this stuff to the room." Sam looked like he was going to protest, so Dean turned to Judy Alvarez. "Yellow room?"

Judy pointed down the hallway. "Third door on your left."

"Thanks. Alright, see you guys later. Nice meeting you, Brooke." Without waiting for a reply, Dean turned and left the lobby.

The rooms were on a long, straight corridor. To one side, immediately next to the lobby, there was a room with a massive stone fireplace, a piano, and several leather chairs and sofas. Beyond that there were only closed doors, each painted a different color. Dean found the yellow door -- the locks were old and simple, would be a breeze to pick -- and went inside.

He let out a low whistle as he flipped on the lights. The room was large and high-ceilinged and very, very yellow. Tall windows looked out into the stormy darkness, framed by yellow hangings; white chairs with yellow afghans draped over them sat beneath the windows on either side of a whitewashed coffee table. The bed, adorned with a yellow patchwork quilt and pillows in half a dozen shades of yellow, faced a fireplace above which hung the stuffed head of a majestic elk. Even the tiles lining the hearth were yellow and white, as were the fixtures, towels, and shower curtain in the bathroom.

Dean set the duffels on a yellow area rug; weapons rattled quietly in one of the bags. Despite the color scheme, the room was chilly, so he stepped over the pile to turn up the thermostat.

"I feel like I've been eaten by a field of dandelions," he said, shaking his head and looking around. The elk above the fireplace did not respond.

But there was no denying it was one of the nicest places they'd ever stayed in, way out of their league. Dean felt a pang of guilt, both for stomping across the nice polished floor in his dirty boots and for avoiding Sam's friends who were paying for it, but he pushed the feeling aside and hauled one of the bags over to the bed.

He rooted around until he found his EMF meter and switched it on. He did a sweep of the room but found nothing. If there were ghosts in the Shadow Mountain Inn, they were currently staying out of the yellow room. After quick deliberation, Dean decided that as long as he was being antisocial he might as well make the most of his time. He turned off the lights, pocketed the key, and stepped into the corridor, EMF meter in hand.

He headed away from the lobby, passing the red, blue, orange, and pink doors, walking slowly and sweeping the EMF meter from side to side. There was a door at the end of the hallway that opened to the outside; the porch was buried in about half a foot of snow and gathering taller drifts along its edges. Dean looked through the window for several moments, his breath frosting the glass, but he could see nothing beyond the log railing. He turned away from the door and climbed the staircase to the second floor, stepping over a thin rope with a neatly-lettered _Closed For Renovations_ sign hanging on it.

The second floor hallway was dark. Dean considered going back for his flashlight, but he could see fairly well in the light from the staircases at either end. The steps went up past the second floor, but they were blocked by a locked door that read _Private Residence, No Admittance_. The hallway was cluttered with piles of lumber and cans of paint, and it had the woody, dusty scent of a construction site. Dean walked carefully, watching his steps in the scant light, moving the EMF meter from side to side. The doors in the hallway were all closed and locked; unlike the rooms on the first floor, these had numbers on them.

When he reached the middle of the hallway, just in front of room eight, the EMF meter squealed. Dean stopped abruptly, glancing down at the meter then around him, scanning the dark corridor, but he saw nothing. He took a few steps to either side; the signal was definitely the strongest right outside room eight.

Patting his pockets, he realized that he had no tools to pick the lock, so he started back toward the stairs. A chill ran over him, and for just a moment he thought they must be keeping the heat low while doing the construction.

A split-second later, he mentally kicked himself and stopped. For several seconds he stood perfectly still, scarcely daring to breathe.

The yellow light in the stairwell at the end of the hallway flickered, and the air grew cooler yet. He could see his breath misting before him in short, sharp bursts.

Dean turned around slowly. There was nothing behind him.

He stepped forward, toward the door to room eight.

There was a cold, quick touch on the back of his neck, and he spun around again.

Still nothing.

"Okay," he whispered. "I know you're there."

The coldness in the air began to recede, and the light in the stairwell stopped flickering.

Dean smirked. "Nice try, but I know where you live--"

Something brushed against his leg and he jumped, stumbling over a stray two-by-four. Looking down, he saw a small dark shape with green eyes peering up at him: the little girl's black cat. The cat bumped itself into his legs again and meowed imploringly.

Laughing to himself, Dean crouched down to scratch the cat's ears. "Hey, there," he said, letting it rub its head against his palm. "Guess if you're here Casper must be gone for now."

The cat began to purr loudly, sprawling on the floor in a fat heap.

"You're not supposed to be up here."

Dean looked up. There was a girl at the end of the hall, a few years older than the one they'd met earlier, standing with her hands on her hips. Dean stood up quickly, slipping the EMF meter into his pocket and scooping the cat into his arms, and walked toward her.

He gave her a sheepish smile and said, "I followed the cat."

She stared at him doubtfully for a moment, then rolled her eyes. She held out her arms to take the cat from him; he hesitated, glancing down at his own hands, then felt like an idiot and forced himself to hand the animal over. "He's not supposed to be here, either. My sister always lets him out when she's not supposed to. We live upstairs," she explained, pointing at the door to the third floor. "My parents own this place."

"It's a great place," Dean told her. "Sorry I went out of bounds. Won't happen again."

She smiled shyly and ducked her head. "That's okay. I won't tell."

Dean went back downstairs to the yellow room. Sam wasn't back from dinner yet, so he showered and collapsed on the bed with the remote control. All of the Denver stations were talking about the storm: _sixteen to twenty inches in some parts of the high country tonight, hazardous conditions, governor requests that people not travel unless necessary_.

Sam returned just as another team of wide-eyed newscasters were gleefully predicting the onset of another ice age. He stopped short just inside the door, holding a saran-wrapped plate of food in one hand.

"Whoa. She wasn't kidding about the yellow." He set the plate on the nightstand beside Dean. "Club sandwich. I figured you might be hungry," he said by way of explanation.

Dean waited for him to say more, to ask him why he hadn't gone to dinner or get that stubborn, questioning look on his face, but Sam only shrugged off his jacket, draped it over one of the chairs by the windows, and sat down on his side of the bed to take off his shoes.

"You find out what happened to your friend's sister?" Dean asked.

Sam nodded slowly, leaning back against the pillows. "Yeah. Well, some of it. Pepper's boyfriend is here, too, and another friend. I guess she called her boyfriend before she called Brooke, and it was the same deal -- ranting and raving, saying all kinds of crazy things. I got the impression he didn't want to give me the details while Brooke was listening. I think he's even more freaked out about it than Brooke, and he wanted to come up here to find out what happened."

Dean thought about Brooke's reaction in the lobby earlier. "But the Alvarez's don't know that, do they? That's why the room is in what's-his-name's name." He picked up the plate and began to unwrap it; he was, as Sam had guessed, pretty hungry.

"David. Yeah, that's why." Sam paused, staring at the radar images on the t.v. for a moment. "I don't know, though. I mean, even after hearing their stories, I'm not sure there's anything going on here."

"Oh, there's something going on here alright."

Sam looked at him. "And you know this...how?"

"Took a look around the place while you were eating." Dean held up a piece of the sandwich, pointing at the ceiling. "Room eight, upstairs." He frowned, pointed more toward the door. "Other side of the hall, actually. There is definitely some ghostly action going on up there. EMF went crazy, lights flickered, cold flash, the works."

"You went into the room?"

"No. The cat found me, and then the Alvarez's daughter. We'll have to check it out tomorrow."

"Shouldn't we do it tonight?" Sam frowned. "If there's something up there..."

Dean shook his head. "I don't think it's dangerous, whatever it is." He though of the cold touch on the back of his neck, shy, almost hesitant, quickly fading when he acknowledged its presence. "It didn't try to hurt me or even scare me, and the cat didn't seem to mind."

"The cat?" Sam repeated blankly.

"You know. Animals can sense harmful spirits, evil presences, and they tend to freak out about it pretty reliably. But the cat wasn't bothered at all."

"Well...if you're sure it can wait until tomorrow..." Sam was looking at him strangely, like he was trying to hear something Dean wasn't saying. "But just because a cat--"

Dean rolled his eyes and said firmly, "Yes, I'm sure. It can wait. What else did your friends say?"

Sam said thoughtfully, "Pepper and her friends were staying in one of the cabins outside, not in one of these rooms."

Dean took a bite of the sandwich. "Could be more than one spirit running around this place. That's another thing to check out tomorrow."

"Okay." Sam paused, then made a face. "Dude. Don't get crumbs in the bed."

Dean took another bite. "You don't like the arrangement, sleep on the floor."

"I'm not the one who kicks like a donkey."

"No, you're the one who snores like a donkey."

"Do not."

"Do too. Hey, check that out." On the television, the weather report came on -- again -- and Dean let out a low whistle. "Glad we don't have to drive anywhere tomorrow."

"They think it's going to keep up?"

"They think the woolly mammoths are going to invade next."

"Cool." Sam closed his eyes and slid down on the bed. A moment later, he opened them again. "Uh, Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Doesn't it feel like that thing is staring at us?"

They both looked up at the stuffed elk head above the fireplace. Its black eyes were blank and empty.

Dean sighed. "Christ, Sam, did you have to say anything?"

"Sorry." Sam closed his eyes. Opened them again. "It's just that its eyes--"

Dean held up a hand. "No. Don't. I want to be able to sleep tonight."

Sam snickered. "You weren't scared of the ghost you met upstairs, but you're scared of the stuffed elk on the wall?"

"Oh, bite me."

The elk, however, remained perfectly still and unblinking through the night.

And the snow did not stop.


	4. Chapter 4

Dean woke to the sound of someone crying.

It was quiet and distant, soft choking sobs lost somewhere in the murky confusion of half-sleep. He strained to listen for several seconds, trying to remember where he had heard it before. As the voice faded, his frustration grew, and the moment he snapped his eyes open, determined to find whomever was crying, it stopped.

With a sigh, Dean rolled onto his back and stared up at the elk head above the fireplace. It was still dark, and he felt like he had slept for at least a few hours. The alarm clock on the nightstand told him it was half past five, and he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep again tonight.

He sat up and slipped out of bed, quietly so as not to wake Sam, and walked over to the windows and leaned against one of the log beams between the panes.

It was still snowing heavily. The meadow outside the inn was white and strangely bright in that way of nighttime storms. Every tree and stone, every car in the parking lot, they were all draped with snow, the harsh lines made soft and round. Nothing was moving except for the falling flakes.

Dean shivered and turned away from the window, walked over to the fireplace and knelt on the tile hearth. There were newspapers and kindling in one rack, dry pine logs in another, and a book of matches on the tiles by the cast-iron poker set. Dean crinkled up the newspapers quietly and piled them up with kindling, placed a couple of logs on top, opened the flue, and lit the paper. The flames spread quickly, orange and red tongues catching and crackling on the dry wood. He moved back from the hearth onto a plush area rug, drew his knees up and leaned against the foot of the bed.

He knew that the crying he had heard wasn't a ghost. It was a dream or an echo of a memory, didn't much matter which, except that he knew it wasn't _his_ dream or memory.

Yet it had woken him every night since they left Las Vegas. The same quiet sobbing, the same plaintive cries, far away and fading, slipping from his mind as he woke, like water through a sieve.

That was a side effect of being possessed nobody ever mentioned: even after the demon was gone, it was damn near impossible to get a decent night's sleep.

He wondered who she was, what the demon had done to her, how long she had cried.

Then he resolutely pushed the thought from his mind and crawled forward to set another log on the fire.

He stayed that way for a long time, feeding the fire and trying not to think, until he felt the bed jostle and heard Sam waking up.

"Hey." Sam flopped over on the bed above him, one arm hanging down over the edge. "You're up early."

Dean shrugged but said nothing.

"Did you sleep okay?"

Glancing sideways at Sam, Dean raised his eyebrows. "Isn't nagging _you_ about sleep supposed to be _my_ job?"

For a second, Sam looked like he was going to snap back, but he only yawned hugely and rubbed his eyes. "They put breakfast out in the restaurant at six," he said.

"And?"

"And since you're already up...don't forget the sugar in my coffee."

"Do I look like a maid to you?"

"Yeah, kinda, except without the little white apron."

Dean rolled his eyes, but he stood up and dressed; there really was no point in being awake this early without coffee. The room was chilly away from the fire, and the hallway was even colder. There didn't seem to be anybody else up, no sounds behind any of the doors on the corridor and nobody in the lobby.

The restaurant was small, containing only about a dozen tables and a long wooden bar. Sam was right, though; breakfast was laid out on a long table by the windows, and a fire was crackling cheerfully in a fireplace at the end of the room. Dean poured himself a cup of coffee and took a pastry from the tray.

He could feel the cold seeping through the windows. Through the storm he could see the dark lumps of the cabins and outbuildings in the meadow around the hotel. He didn't relish the thought of tramping through the snow -- now about two feet deep -- to investigate the cabins, but if that's where the girl had died, that's what they had to do.

"Good morning. Quite a storm we're having, isn't it?"

Dean turned around. A woman crossed the room, carrying a stack of napkins toward the table. She was plump and elderly, with short-cropped gray hair and wearing a neat gray uniform. Her nametag read "Nancy," and she gave Dean a pleasant smile.

"Yeah," he agreed, "it's really something else."

Nancy set the napkins down and began fussing with the plates and mugs on the table. "They're saying if it keeps up it might even be worse than that blizzard back in '03."

Dean sipped his coffee and asked, "Have you worked here long?"

"Twenty-five years this July," Nancy answered proudly.

"Yeah?" Dean paused, put on a smile and adopted a casual tone. "We read on the website that people think this place is haunted. Have you ever seen any ghosts...or anything?"

Nancy laughed. "Oh, those are just stories." She arranged the rows of mugs on the tabletop into straighter lines. "You know how folks talk about these old places."

"So you've never seen or heard anything? Noises, flickering lights..."

"It's an old building," Nancy said, the laughter fading from her voice. "If you'll excuse me." She glanced over her shoulder as a couple came into the restaurant, then nodded curtly and hurried away.

Dean watched her leave through a swinging door on the other side of the room.

"I'll take that as a 'yes'," he muttered.

~

Dean waited while Sam knelt in the snow to pick the lock on the cabin door. The door faced up the valley, away from the rest of the buildings and somewhat shielded from the wind. He couldn't see the hotel from where they stood, but they'd gotten strange enough looks from Judy Alvarez just for going outside. He didn't want to have to explain their breaking and entering to anyone.

The lock clicked and Sam stood up, brushing the snow off his legs. He pushed the door open slowly and waited for Dean to go inside first.

Dean stepped through the doorway, kicked the snow off his shoes on the rug just inside the door, and reached over to flip on the light. Heavy curtains were drawn over the windows, and the air inside of the cabin was almost as cold as it was outside. The cabin was just one room with a bathroom built into the corner; the ceiling was low and the log walls were dark, giving the place a tight, claustrophobic feel. Two double beds stood against one wall, both of them stripped of sheets and blankets, and there was a wooden table and kitchenette on the opposite side. A handful of framed photographs decorated the walls, old black-and-whites of the inn and valley years ago. A fat wood-burning stove sat in the corner with a pile of firewood beside it.

Between the table and the beds, on the beige carpet that covered the floor, there was a wide dark stain.

"Pepper was staying here with two friends," Sam explained quietly. "She wasn't feeling well, so they went out to do some backcountry skiing without her, and when they came back that night they found her." He paused, looking down at the stain. "She cut her wrists."

Dean took of his gloves and switched on the EMF meter. It squealed immediately, a high steady signal that didn't vary as he walked around the room.

"There's something here alright," he said, stepping carefully over the blood stain on the carpet. "Don't usually see a signal this strong in the middle of the day."

"Yeah." Sam began opening and closing the drawers of the furniture and kitchen cabinets. "It doesn't help us much if we don't know who it is, though."

"What did your friend say?" Dean pushed back the curtain over the bathroom window and glanced outside; across the meadow, through the falling snow, he could see a man opening the door of a detached garage. "Her sister give her any clues before she died?"

"If you had come to dinner last night, you could have asked her yourself."

Dean looked over his shoulder, eyebrows raised.

Sam hesitated as though he was going to say more, then shook his head and turned back to his search of the kitchen cabinets. "Not much. I'm not sure they were telling me the whole story, but it sounds like Pepper called Keith -- that's her boyfriend, he's here too -- then Brooke, and both times she was raving, saying crazy stuff that didn't make sense."

"Didn't make sense how?" Dean turned off the EMF meter and pocketed it. Even without it, he could tell there was something in the cabin. It didn't feel like the shy ghost he'd encountered the night before, less like blast of cold -- though the air was icy enough already -- and more like a probing finger worrying a wound, pressing on a bruise or--

"Dean!"

He spun around, his hand going immediately to the gun in his waistband. "What?"

Sam held his hands out to the sides, obviously frustrated. "You're doing it again."

Dean took his hand off the gun and scowled. "Doing what?"

"Blanking out, like your mind is a million miles away. Do you even know when it's happening?"

Dean ignored the question. "I was just thinking; I don't think whatever's in here is the same thing I met last night."

Sam looked like he wasn't quite ready to change the subject, but he dropped his hands to his sides and asked, "Why not?"

"It's..." Dean stopped, trying to decide how to explain it. "It feels different," he said finally.

"Feels?" Sam repeated skeptically. "You hunt ghosts by _feel_ now?"

"No, it's..." He trailed off again. When he concentrated he could still tell it was there, pervasive and silent all around them, as much a part of the cabin as the dark logs and white mortar and blood-stained carpet. "I..."

_I have no idea why I can feel it._

But that wasn't quite true, and Sam would know it.

Dean shrugged. "Never mind. There's something here, where the girl died, and now we have to figure out what it is."

"Or who it was," Sam added. He took a wooden frame from the wall above the kitchen table. "Check this out. It says here that this is the oldest building in the valley, one of the oldest surviving buildings in the region, built in 1879. That was years before the sanatorium and--"

The cabin door creaked open. They both spun to face it, and Dean drew his gun. A young man stepped into the room, saw the gun, and jumped back with a startled shout and his hands in the air.

"Keith!" Sam set the picture frame down and glared at Dean; Dean shrugged and tucked his gun away. "What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to see--" Keith's voice trailed off as he looked down at the dark stain on the carpet. He took in a deep, shaky breath and ran a hand through his hair, brushing aside damp, heavy snowflakes. "It's dumb, I guess," he went on. "I just wanted to see...but I didn't think there would be anything, I thought she was in the bathtub or something..."

"Hey." Sam stepped over to Keith and put a hand on his shoulder. "There's nothing to see here. You don't have to--"

"Have you found it yet?" Keith interrupted. He looked from Sam to Dean. "I mean...whatever it is you're looking for?" The question sounded almost hopeful.

"You sound pretty convinced that we're going to find something," Dean said.

"No, I didn't mean..." Keith stammered. "I just, uh, thought since you're looking..."

"Pepper called you before she died, didn't she?"

Sam shot a warning glance at Dean but said to Keith, "What did she say?" When Keith didn't answer, he prompted, "Last night you said she was saying some things that you thought were...weird, but it seemed like you didn't want to repeat them in front of Brooke."

Keith sighed heavily and sat down on one of the beds, then looked up at Sam and shook his head. "I don't know, man. She called our house -- I didn't answer, Ari did--"

"He's here, too," Sam explained to Dean.

"And she just started shouting at him that she needed to talk to me, so he gave me the phone and...I don't know. She was nuts. I've known Pepper two years, and she's never been like that." Keith swallowed and began playing with the zipper of his jacket. "She's usually so chill, never gets -- never got -- upset about anything. But that day...she accused me of cheating on her, said she knew everything I'd been doing, and as soon as she got back she'd...make me pay."

Dean asked, "Were you?"

"Dean!" Sam glared at him, but Keith only smiled crookedly.

"No," he said softly. "But I think she was. And I said so when she started shouting and...well, it just made her crazier. I mean...I don't know for sure. I was going to talk to her about it when she got back. I think...I think it was one of her professors. A married professor." Keith glanced up at Sam. "That's why I didn't want to say anything in front of Brooke. It's...well, it doesn't matter now."

Sam asked gently, "Anything else?"

"No, not really." Keith shrugged and stood up. "Do you think...what do you think happened?"

"We don't know yet," Dean said, "but we'll find out."

When Keith left, Sam shook his head. "Poor guy. The last time he ever talked to his girlfriend, and she was out of her mind."

"Sounds like it." Dean leaned against the kitchenette counter. "Also sounds like she might have been in a troubled state of mind to begin with. Maybe she was already vulnerable."

"Yeah." Sam paused, biting his lip.

Dean felt a sinking sensation in his stomach and pushed away from the counter. "Come on. There's nothing more to find here."

"It could be that this spirit, or whatever, was in her mind, making her say those things and..."

"Yeah?"

Sam exhaled an exasperated sigh. "Dean, come on. You can't pretend that the possibility doesn't bother you, not after what happened in Vegas. Are you okay with--"

Dean narrowed his eyes. "Sam, half our jobs involve some spirit or ghost or something messing with people's minds. That's what the fuckers do. I'm not going to stop working just because of one shitty job. Now, come on. We're done here. I'm freezing my ass off."

He walked over to the door, not bothering to avoid the bloodstain, and waited for Sam to follow. He was suddenly too aware of the dark log walls and low ceiling, of the faint, rusty taste on the cold air, and when he yanked open the door the swirling snowflakes and gathering drifts were almost a relief.

"At least you're finally admitting that it was a bad experience," Sam said, in that you-know-I'm-right-and-you're-wrong-and-there-ain't-nothing-you-can-do-about-it voice that all little brothers were born knowing how to use for maximum annoyingness.

Dean didn't even turn around. _Of course it was a shit experience, you moron_, he thought, stepping out of the cabin and waiting for Sam to relock the door behind them. _And yammering on about it won't change that._

But he didn't say anything. The last thing he wanted to do was encourage Sam to keep bugging him.

They trudged back toward the hotel through snow that was now almost knee-deep. Ahead of the, smoke rose from several of the chimneys of the hotel, and the door of one of a detached garage was open. Somebody was trying, and failing, to get some kind of engine to turn over; it sounded like a truck, whining and wheezing for a few moments before falling silent, the sporadic noise carrying across the meadow.

"Hey, Dean."

_Oh, god. Give it up, Sammy._ Dean shoved his hands into his pockets and didn't stop.

"Dean, stop."

He spun around -- "Jesus Christ, Sam, wha--" -- and was hit full in the face by a snowball.

Dean spluttered and wiped the snow from his face. Sam was standing about twenty feet away, smiling like a maniac but posed to run and patting another snowball into shape.

Dean glared at him until Sam's grin began to falter uncertainly.

"That's not funny."

"Look, man, I'm--"

"And you throw like a girl."

"I do not, you--"

Dean leaned down, scooped two handfuls of snow into a loose ball, and flung it as hard as he could to cut off Sam's indignant reply. It struck Sam in the center of the chest, and his eyes narrowed as he brushed off his coat.

"You started it," Dean said, stepping awkwardly to the side. It was difficult to circle menacingly in knee-deep snow, but he did his best.

"You deserved it," Sam countered, packing the snowball in his hands tighter.

Dean gathered up some more ammo; it was good snow, heavy and wet, and it stuck together nicely.

"You still throw like a girl."

"Yeah? Then why're you so scared?"

"I'm not scared. I'm trying not to laugh."

"We'll see who's laughing."

"That's big talk for a little boy, Sammy."

They threw at the same instant. Dean ducked to the side and looked up just in time to see Sam eating a face full of snow. He packed more hurriedly together and didn't stop, hurling as fast as he could, dodging Sam's shots and slowly closing the distance between them.

"--weak, man, that's really weak--"

"--s'posed to pack 'em, not just fling snowflakes, Frosty--"

"--your fault I lost my fucking gloves anyway--"

"--oh, who you gonna run crying to--"

When there was just a few steps between them, Dean stopped, gasping for breath. He watched as Sam scooped up glob of snow about the size of a dog in those freakishly big hands of his -- _no way, punk, that won't do at all_ \-- and waited until he saw the glint in Sam's eye, then launched himself at Sam, taking him down in a full-body tackle.

Sam let out a high-pitched noise that pretty much proved Dean's my-brother-is-a-big-girl theory and began to flail wildly in the drifts. Dean flinched away from the flying arms and legs, shoved Sam back down as he tried to sit up, and sat heavily on his chest.

"Done now?"

"Fuck you."

"Awww, is little Sammy mad because he lost?"

"I didn't lose."

"Looks like you're outta the game from where I'm sitting."

Sam tried to shove him off, then gave up and fell back in the snow, laughing. "Asshole."

"Wimp."

"I have ice in my ears, you fuckhead."

Dean punched his hands into the air victoriously. "Damn straight. I always hit where I aim. You're talking to the Alameda County all-time record-holder for no-hit innings."

"Until you got kicked off the team."

"Their loss. They never won a single game after that."

"Yeah, whatever. Dude, get off. You weigh a ton."

"Not until you admit defeat."

"Fine. You win."

Too late, Dean saw the twitch of Sam's lips, and he couldn't move fast enough before Sam caught his collar and shoved a handful of snow into his shirt.

"Son of a _bitch_!" Dean scrambled to his feet, trying to swipe the chunks away from his neck, and glared down at Sam, who was laughing so hard he could barely sit upright. "Okay. Truce?"

Sam took a deep breath and held out his hand. "Yeah. Truce."

Dean helped him to his feet. "For now," he added, filling the words with as much menace as he could. Sam only grinned.

They started back toward the hotel, brushing damp snow off their jeans and trying to warm their hands. It hadn't stopped snowing, and the brief period of morning brightness seemed to be fading as the clouds grew thick and dark again.

Just behind the inn, at one of the smaller buildings, a man was closing a garage door. He smiled and waved at them as they approached.

"Hi there," he called, pulling on a pair of gloves. "Nice day for a walk, isn't it?"

"Couldn't be better," Sam agreed, putting on the expression Dean recognized as his friendly stranger smile.

"'Course I'd feel better if we could plow out of here," the man went on, gesturing at the closed garage door, "but guess we can't have everything."

"Is your truck out of commission?" Dean asked, thinking of the engine he'd heard earlier.

"Yeah, seems to be." The man stepped forward and held out his gloved hand. "Rick Alvarez, by the way. My wife and I own this place."

"Nice to meet you," Sam replied, shaking the man's hand.

Dean tilted his head toward the garage. "You want me to take a look at it? I know a thing or two about engines, might be able to get it running."

Rick shrugged. "Nah, it's not worth the trouble. Judy called some folks from the town to get the road clear, and I'm sure they'll be along soon. Guess they have a big mess down on 34, blocking traffic every which way, but they're usually pretty good about getting up here as quick as they can."

"Well, if you change your mind, just let me know," Dean said. He held out his hand, catching a few snowflakes. "It doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon."

~

Dean had planned to check out the second floor after lunch, but when he and Sam went up there they found that Rick Alvarez and his teenage daughter were using the afternoon to get some of the renovation work done. Rick wasn't at all bothered to see them upstairs, and he happily launched into a description of the restoration work he was doing. Dean listened for about two minutes before wandering away, leaving Sam to appreciate the lesson about historic wallpaper preservation.

Most of the doors of the second-floor rooms were still closed and locked. Dean walked down the hallway slowly, retracing his steps from the night before, and stopped in front of room eight; it, too, was still locked, but he examined the doorknob and figured that Sam would be able to pick it in about ten seconds when they came back up that night. There didn't seem to be much of interest in the few open rooms. Some were empty except for tools and supplies, and others were crammed with furniture, draped with sheets and piled high. They all looked liked perfectly ordinary hotel rooms undergoing renovations, and Dean felt no sign of the cold presence he'd encountered the night before.

When Sam finally excused himself from Rick's enthusiastic chatter, they went back downstairs.

"I now know more about molding than I ever wanted to," Sam said, leaning against the wall while Dean unlocked the yellow room. "I tried to ask about the haunting rumors, but Rick really just wanted to talk about chair rails and crown pieces."

"I'm thinking that the people who live and work here know something's going on," Dean said. He pocketed the key and stepped into the yellow room, dropping his coat over the back of a chair.

"Well, sure," Sam agreed. "They put it on the website, didn't they? But it doesn't help us if they don't know just whose ghost we're dealing with."

"Or ghosts." Dean thought for a moment, watching the falling snow through the window. "I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I think we need to do some more research. Rick seems pretty proud of the history of this place, right?"

"You'd think he built it himself, the way he was going on."

"They must have got that information from somewhere." Dean turned away from the window and walked back to the door. "Maybe they've got something we can use."

They found Judy Alvarez in the small office next to the front lobby. Dean let Sam do the talking, playing the "we're interested in old buildings" card with an extra helping of "and also we're bored out of our minds today." He watched with amusement as Judy went straight from skeptical to helpful in two minutes flat. Sam had a gift, there was no denying it.

It turned out the Alvarez's did have a bunch of information about the history of the inn. Judy gave them a three-ring binder of photocopies and notes, things she and her husband had collected for help in getting the renovation permits, and Dean and Sam took it into the piano room by the lobby. Most of it was a retread of what they had already learned at the library in Vail, information about who had owned the property through the years, when it had changed hands, what buildings were added and taken down.

Dean grew bored of reading after a while and stood up to pace around the room. The grand piano was open and there was sheet music on the stand, and on a shelf in the corner there were a few decks of cards, board games, and paperbacks. The huge stone fireplace at the opposite end of the room was unlit. Dean walked over to it, thinking that the room felt a little chilly and could use a fire, then he stopped and looked up.

Hanging on the chimney there was a large painting, about five feet wide, a panoramic view of the inn, the meadow around it, and the mountains in the background. The meadow was green with splashes of color, and there was a dark thunderstorm rolling over the snowcapped range. The inn and its surrounding buildings looked tiny, dwarfed by the dark green pines and towering peaks. A trick of perspective, Dean realized after studying it for a few moments, laid out to make it look like there was an awful lot of rock and sky, and no place to hide.

A small gold plaque on the wooden frame read, _Never Summer Range, by Ethan Warrington_.

Dean asked over his shoulder, "Did the Warringtons have a son? The folks who turned the place into a hotel?"

"A son and a daughter," Sam replied. "I found a newspaper clipping with a family photo. Son's name is Ethan. Guess who the daughter is."

Dean turned around. "Judy?"

"Yep. Her parents started the hotel, and now it's hers."

"Where's her brother now?"

"No idea." Sam looked up from the mess of papers on the coffee table. "Why?"

"No reason," Dean said. He gestured up toward the painting. "He painted that."

"Huh. It's pretty good."

"You find anything else?"

"Not really." Sam shrugged. "I mean, people lived here, people died, but there's nothing in this stuff that points to who might be haunting it."

The rest of the afternoon didn't produce any more useful information. They made a short list of names of people who had apparently died while owning or living at the inn, but without knowing anything about the deaths, Dean knew it wouldn't be much help. It was frustrating, not being able to run out to the county records office to dig a little deeper.

And, he thought, glancing out the window, it was a little weird that it was already dark but the promised snow plows hadn't yet made it up the road.

He was about to suggest that they pack it in for the night when Brooke and a man Dean assumed was her fiancé passed by in the corridor outside.

"Hey," Brooke called, pausing outside the piano room. "We're going for an early dinner. Want to join us?"

Sam stood up quickly, shoving papers aside, and gave Dean a look that Dean decided wasn't worth arguing with. "Yeah, sure. We'd love to."

They went down to the restaurant and took a table by one of the tall windows. David introduced himself to Dean, and Nancy had hurried over to bring them water and menus and hurried away again.

David leaned back in his chair and let out a sigh. "What a boring day."

"What did you do today?" Sam asked, opening his menu.

"Nothing," Brooke replied. "Learned about antique wallpaper. Learned about Mr. and Mrs. Morton's--" she gestured toward an elderly couple on the other side of the restaurant "--entire life story, and well as the life stories of their parakeets. Looked at the newlywed Mr. and Mrs. Kaufman's--" she nodded her head toward a couple at the bar "--ten thousand wedding pictures. Went stir crazy."

"We now know just what they mean when they say 'cabin fever'," David added. "This is ridiculous. Even the people who just work here and live in town are stuck."

Sam looked out the window, then glanced at Dean questioningly. "Didn't Mr. Alvarez say somebody from the town was going to clear the road today?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah, that's what he said. Looks like it didn't happen, though."

"It's a private road, not maintained by the county," Brooke said. "At least, that's what Mr. Morton told us. Maybe they don't consider it a priority."

"So we're stuck," David said. He picked up his glass of water, took a sip, and looked at first Sam, then Dean, with a strange half-smile on his face. "So, what did you do today? Find any ghosts?"

Dean glanced around the restaurant. The elderly couple were sitting on the far side of the room, and the young couple at the bar were giggling and cooing and paying nobody else any attention. The young woman behind the bar was staring dazedly into space and yawning.

None of them were close enough to overhear the conversation, so he met David's eyes and said, "Yes."

There was a brief silence. Dean saw Sam shift uncomfortably, sitting upright and leaning forward, and he watched Brooke and David exchange a rapid glance.

Brooke asked, hesitantly, "You did?"

Sam leaned his elbows on the table. "Yeah, we think so. There is definitely something here. And...out in the cabin."

"You did?" Brooke said again, her voice barely louder than a whisper. "Something where Pepper...was staying?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah. We don't know--"

"That's not funny," David snapped, looking away from Dean to glare at Sam.

"I'm not trying to be funny," Sam replied evenly. "We found evidence of--"

"Evidence?" David laughed and shook his head. "Of things that don't exist? Sam, I don't know what kind of game you're playing at here--"

Dean interrupted, ignoring Sam's warning glance, "It's not a game. Just because you never learned about it doesn't mean it don't exist, college boy."

"Ghosts and monsters?" David leaned back in his chair, shaking his head again. Brooke looked down at her plate, folding and unfolding the cloth napkin nervously. "Give me a break. Sam, man, look. It's great to see you again. We were really happy when Rebecca said she'd seen you, because we were worried. All of us were worried. After Jessica died--"

Dean saw Sam tense, just a straightening of his back and set of his jaw, slight but unmistakable.

"--you kind of went off the deep end there." David's voice changed, shifting smoothly from skeptical to concerned. "But we thought you'd get over it, get back to your real life after a while, instead of giving everything up."

Sam said slowly, "I know you don't believe me, David, but this is what we do. It's real. It's what--" He glanced at Dean quickly. "It's what my family does."

"The family that you never wanted anything to do with? A family of ghostbusters? Come on, Sam, we're not idiots--"

Dean shoved his chair back, scraping it along the wooden floor, and stood up. He leaned his fists on the table and stared down at David.

"Dean..." Sam's voice was wary, uncertain, and he started to rise as well.

"Nobody likes a skeptic, David," Dean said.

Then he straightened up and walked away from the table.

"Dean, wait."

"I'm not hungry," he tossed over his shoulder. For one annoyed moment he thought Sam would follow him, but when he glanced back Sam was sinking into his chair again.

Dean walked through the empty lobby, past the empty piano room, and stopped in front of the yellow door. He dug the key out of his pocket and slipped it into the lock.

"Can you help me?"

Startled, Dean whipped his head around and looked down the hallway. The Alvarez's younger daughter -- Myra, that was her name -- was standing by the door at the end of the corridor.

"I'm not supposed to let him out," she said, "but I did and now I'm going to get in trouble."

Dean heard tears in her voice and started toward her. "Did you lose your cat?"

"Yeah." She wiped her nose with her sleeve and nodded. "His name is Baxter. He wanted to go out, so I let him out even though he's not supposed to."

"You mean..." Dean stared at her for a second. Her hair was damp with melting snow and there were puddles on the floor around her feet. "Outside? You let him outside in this weather?"

Her face scrunched up like she was going to cry. "He _likes_ the snow," she said defensively. "But now he won't come back in. He likes to hide under the deck."

"Under this deck?"

"Yeah. Can you help me? I tried to reach him, but my arms aren't long enough. And I can't ask Dad 'cause I'll get in trouble..."

With a sigh, Dean stepped over and put his hand on the doorknob. "I guess," he said, not bothering to hide his lack of enthusiasm. It was dark outside, and the snow on the porch was well over two feet deep. He couldn't imagine Bigfoot willingly wading through drifts like that, much less a fat housecat. "Are you sure he's out there? What kind of cat goes through that kind of snow?"

"Baxter does," Myra said with certainty. "He likes the snow."

"Yeah, I'll bet. Fine. Under this porch, you said?"

"That's where he hides."

"Fine." Dean opened the door, flinching as the cold air and whirling snowflakes blew in. "I'll look for him."

Myra's expression brightened immediately. "Thank you."

"Yeah, yeah. Damn cat." Dean waded gingerly into the snow. The cold bit at his face, and in the darkness he could barely see the railing of the porch. He made his way over to the steps that led down to the ground, thinking belatedly that he ought to have gone back for his gloves.

He went down the steps carefully, kicking through the snow to feel each log riser. He paused and looked back just in time to see the door slam shut behind him.


	5. Chapter 5

An awkward silence fell over the table after Dean left.

"Sam..." David began, looking contrite.

Slumping down in his seat, Sam shook his head. "Don't worry about it," he said.

"You have to admit it's a little much to believe," Brooke said, smiling uncertainly. "It's not exactly what we used to imagine when you would get all cagey talking about the Winchester family business."

Sam shrugged. "You're not going to believe anything we tell you until we have proof anyway, so let's just...talk about something else, okay?"

But David wasn't quite ready to move on. "Proof?"

"We're going to..." Sam glanced around at the other people in the restaurant, but nobody was paying them any attention. "We're going to do some checking around tonight. If we find something, we'll be sure to wake you up." He smiled to make it a half-joke, then he sat forward, took a sip of water, and firmly changed the subject. "So when's the wedding?"

They chatted easily for a while. Brooke and David filled Sam in on what several of their friends had been doing. Jobs, graduate school, med school, marriage: it all sounded so alien, as if they were talking about complete strangers, though he recalled the face that went with every name. Nancy came to take their orders, and Sam ordered for both himself and Dean, smiling thankfully when Nancy said she'd have the second meal wrapped up to take back to the room.

The conversation trailed off when the food arrived. Sam could tell they wanted to ask him more questions, and he could feel their frustration compounded by a day's restlessness cooped up inside. But he simply didn't have the patience to go through it again. He ate quickly, barely tasting the food, and excused himself before Brooke and David were finished.

He left the restaurant. In the lobby, he passed a thin, elderly man with stooped shoulders and the smell of cigar smoke clinging to him. The man smiled and nodded as Sam walked by.

The three-ring binder of papers and articles Judy had given to him was still sitting open on the coffee table of the piano room, but the room was no longer empty. There was a fire crackling on the hearth, and a young man sat at the piano, picking out a low, slow, jazzy melody.

"Good evening." The young man was dark-haired and unshaven, wearing a white dress shirt and rumpled like he'd been up all last night but hadn't bothered to change in the morning. He spoke without looking up from the keyboard. "Cold tonight, isn't it?"

Sam wondered briefly if all Colorado residents started every conversation with a comment about the weather, but he replied, "Yeah, it sure is."

"All snowed in with nowhere to go." The man looked up then, though he didn't stop playing. There were dark, tired circles under his eyes, but his expression was friendly and relaxed. "It's very unfortunate about the road. What brings you to this godforsaken place?"

"Visiting friends," Sam answered. "You don't like it here?"

The man shrugged, and the music shifted into something faster, more complex, slightly shrill. "I like every other place better."

"Do you work here?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"What do you do?"

The music changed again, a high playful trill that settled into a melody Sam recognized immediately. "Serenade the happy couples," the man said, his lips quirking in an ironic smile. "Convince them they're enjoying romantic solitude rather than wasting their vacation in the middle of nowhere."

"That bad, huh?" Sam wondered if an unhappy employee might be more willing to talk about the hotel's ghosts than the other people were.

The young man gave Sam a long, steady look and winked. "Some days are better than others," he said.

Sam smiled awkwardly. "Have you ever--"

But his question was interrupted by the sound of raised voices in the hallway. He looked down toward the far end and saw a group of people gathered: Rick Alvarez, his younger daughter, and the newlywed couple who had been in the restaurant earlier.

The young man at the piano titled his head to one side. "What do you suppose that is?" he asked, his voice suddenly bored. Instead of rising from the bench, he began to sing along quietly to his music: "It's still the same old story, a fight for love and glory..."

At the end of the corridor, Rick turned around and pointed at Sam. "You there," he called angrily, his voice echoing off the wood paneling as he strode forward. "Where is he? Where's that guy who's with you?"

Sam frowned and started down the hall. "Dean? He's in--"

He stopped in front of the yellow door; the key was in the lock, the clunky metal charm dangling down from the ring. He turned the key and pushed the door open, set the plate of food on the nightstand and checked the bathroom, but the room was empty.

"I don't know," Sam said, going back out into the hallway. "Why?"

Rick narrowed his eyes. "You don't know where he is?"

"What happened?" Sam asked slowly. A shiver of worry passed through him as he followed Rick to the end of the hallway. The little girl was sniffling and wiping her eyes as the woman tried to comfort her. She looked up at Sam through her pink plastic glasses and her lip began to tremble.

The man -- Kaufman was the name Brooke had said -- answered Sam's question: "We found her sitting here on the steps. When we asked her what was wrong, she said that the man shouted at her--"

Rick interrupted, his voice trembling with anger, "Shouted at her _and_ threatened her. Threatened my _daughter_. I don't know what the hell his problem is, but your friend--"

_God, no not this..._

Sam spoke directly to the little girl. "Tell me what happened."

The girl sniffed and broke away from the woman to go over to her father. "He yelled at me," she said, blinking her wide, wet eyes. "I asked him to help me find Baxter and he laughed and said Baxter was dead and then he yelled at me and said...and said..." She turned away, burying her face in her father's shirt.

Rick's voice rose to a shout. "I don't know what kind of sick freak--"

"He is not a--" Sam began to snarl a retort, but he stopped himself and spoke over Rick, struggling to keep his voice calm. "Where did he go? You--" _damn it, what was the kid's name?_ "--do you know where he went?"

The girl nodded and pointed at the door. "Outside. He tried to pull me outside, but I ran back in and slammed the door and locked it. He pounded on the window then went away."

"Outside? He never came back in?" Sam stepped over to the door and peered out the window, his heart thudding painfully in his chest. _Please, no, not again..._ There were footsteps across the porch, leading down the steps and vanishing into the snow and darkness.

"I locked it," the girl told him, "so he wouldn't come back in."

Sam spun around, thinking rapidly. "The other doors?" he asked Rick. "Are the other doors locked?"

"What the hell are you--" Rick spluttered incredulously, gaping at Sam. "What's going on?"

Behind Rick, Sam saw Judy hurrying toward them along the hallway; Brooke and David weren't far behind her. A door -- the blue one -- opened and Keith and his friend stuck their heads out. The hallway was starting to feel very crowded.

Sam ran his hand through his hair. There were dozens of places to hide inside the hotel, three stories and unused rooms, far too much space. If Dean was...and if he came back inside..._Shit_.

Sam shook his head quickly. "Doors," he repeated. He tried to remember if Dean had any tools on him, anything with which he could pick a lock, then realized it might not matter if he was willing to smash a window. "What other entrances are there? The front door...?"

"Nobody came in the front," Judy offered. "I've been in the office for over an hour. I would have heard it and felt the cold. Rick, what's going on?"

"There's the kitchen too," Rick said, his voice low now but no calmer, "but that one is always locked."

Sam pointed at Judy. "Go lock the front door."

"What--"

"Just go!" Sam snapped.

Judy looked from her husband to her daughter and didn't move. "I don't under--"

Brooke said, "I'll do it." She glanced at Sam quickly and hurried down the hall.

"What's going on?" Judy asked again, going over to her daughter. "What happened? Myra, why are you crying? Are you okay?"

The little girl nodded silently.

"This friend of yours is dangerous?" Rick asked, smoothing his daughter's hair.

"Dangerous!" Judy exclaimed. "Rick, what the hell is going on?"

"Brother." Sam corrected absently, ignoring her and exhaling slowly. "He's my brother. And--" _Shit, shit, shit, I thought this was over._ "And we have to find him. I have to find him."

Without waiting for them to answer, he hurried back to the yellow room and pushed the door open. He lifted one of the duffels onto the bed and began going through it. It didn't look like Dean had taken anything -- all of the guns, at least, were accounted for -- but Sam couldn't be sure. He found the stun guns and set them on the yellow comforter. They'd left the rope in the car.

Remembering his cell phone suddenly, Sam pulled it from his pocket and began to scroll down to Dean's number before he saw the message on the screen: _No service_. He threw the phone aside in frustration.

"We'll help you look."

Sam looked over his shoulder. It was Keith and his friend Ari, both pulling on heavy coats and hats.

Sam hesitated. "It's not safe," he began.

"Yeah, no kidding," Ari said. "It's below freezing out there."

"I mean--"

"We've both done volunteer search and rescue over in Indian Peaks," Keith explained. "And," he glanced at Sam's jacket and boots, "we're better equipped than you, anyway."

_Not in the way that matters_, Sam thought. He picked up one of the stun guns and turned it on, switched it to the correct setting.

"Okay," he said, watching their eyes widen. "One of you take this. Don't zap yourself."

They both stared at him.

"What is that for?" Keith asked. "What's going on? Is there something--"

"There's no time to explain," Sam said. _And I hope to god I'm wrong._ He stepped forward and pressed the stun gun into Keith's hands. "Just...we have to find him, and if he tries anything, shoot him."

"Shoot him?" Keith repeated. "Shoot your _brother_?"

"If he tries _what_?" Ari asked, eyeing the stun gun warily.

"Anything. It won't kill him. Come on." Sam tucked the other stun gun into his jacket.

"You're insane," Ari said firmly.

"Look, man," Keith began, "we'll help you look outside, but this is--"

"There's no time to explain," Sam said again, grinding the words out through clenched teeth. "You just have to trust me. It's -- it might not be what I think, but if it is, we have to be ready--"

Keith looked down at the stun gun. "Is it...is whatever's wrong with your brother the same thing that was wrong with Pepper?"

_Oh._ Sam blinked, suddenly understanding why they were willing to help.

"I don't know," he replied. "Maybe. I don't -- I just know we have to find him."

Keith nodded. "Okay," he said, jamming the stun gun into his jacket pocket.

Ari asked, "Is he wearing his coat?"

Sam looked around the room. "He had it earlier..." Dean had complained about how cold the piano room was, pacing around and huddling into his coat like he always did when he was restless. "I don't see it here."

"Then let's go," Ari said. "Let's help one crazy guy find another. It's cold out there."

Sam looked at each of them in turn -- he half-expected Keith to change his mind and stun _him_, he knew he was making so little sense -- but they followed him out of the room and back down the hallway with further comment.

Sam brushed aside Rick's questions as he pulled open the door. "Lock it behind us," he said, "and keep it locked until we get back."

And they went out into the night.

The snow was falling heavily, obscuring everything more than a few feet away and making the flashlights almost useless. The tracks, however, were easy to follow. The snow on the porch was disturbed in a wide strip, as though Dean had paced back and forth across it a few times, but the path leading down the steps and around the hotel was narrow. Thirty inches, Sam guessed, the snow was about thirty inches deep, heavy and wet and really fucking hard to walk through.

Dean's tracks lead around to the front of the hotel, aiming for the front entrance. There was a short detour up to the windows of the yellow room and a trampled area like he had examined the windows, but otherwise Dean's path didn't waver until he reached the edge of the parking lot. There, just a few feet away from the oddly-shaped lumps that were the cars, the trail made a sharp turn to the right, away from the hotel and along the line of cars toward the forest.

"Where was he going?" Keith asked. His voice was strangely muffled; there was no other sound except the faint whisper of falling snow.

Sam didn't answer or pause as he followed the tracks away from the hotel. The trail led along the edge of the parking lot, making only one quick jog to the side between two cars. There was nothing between the cars that he could see, nothing to indicate what Dean had been doing. Sam tried to quicken his pace even though he was already feeling the exertion of slogging through the drifts.

Just at the end of the parking lot, only a few feet beyond the last car, Ari flipped on his flashlight and cast it on the ground in front of them. "What happened here?"

Sam immediately saw what he meant. The snow was churned up and kicked around, trampled and roughened in a wide area.

Keith began, "It's looks like..."

It looked like there had been a struggle or a fight. Sam turned on his own flashlight quickly and swept it around until he spotted something on the snow. Stumbling forward, he slipped clumsily to his knees and bent down to examine it. In the flashlight beam, dark spots stood out against the gleaming white. Blood.

He pulled off his glove and reached out hesitantly, then jerked his hand away and scrambled to his feet. There were tracks leading away from the churned-up patch, and while there was no way of telling if they had been left by more than one person, it was obvious which way they had to go.

"Sam, wait!"

He turned around impatiently. "There's blood on the snow," he said. "He could be hurt. We can't stop, we have to--"

"Look at the tracks." Ari swept his flashlight along the ground. "It's looks like--"

"--like something was dragged," Sam finished. He took a few panicked steps. "Dean! Dean, can you hear me?"

His voice echoed oddly in the meadow, as though it was flung out but stopped short by the snow. There was no reply.

Sam tried to think, looking around wildly, trying to find some clue as to what it was. If it was a ghost, the stun guns wouldn't be much use, and he'd left the rock-salt loaded guns back at the hotel. But it could be something else. It could be Dean, dragging someone else, somebody they hadn't known was missing from the hotel. There was no way of knowing, nothing except a few specks of blood and a trail of disturbed snow.

He swallowed and took deep breath; the cold air stung his throat and lungs. "We have to keep going."

He hurried toward the forest as quickly as he could, telling himself that it was just his eyes playing tricks on him when he saw more droplets of blood dotting the ground. The snow was coming down ridiculously fast, obscuring everything more than a few feet away and hitting his face in a wet, cold onslaught. He could hear Keith and Ari close behind him, but he didn't look back.

Just as they reached the edge of the rest, Sam saw a shadow from the corner of his eye and heard one of the guys exclaim, "What the _fuck_\--"

He turned quickly to the left and saw a dark shape vanishing into the trees.

"What the hell was that?" Ari's voice trembled as he spoke.

Sam stared into the forest, but he saw nothing except the dark trunks of trees and falling snow. There were no tracks marring the snow where the shadow had been.

"I don't know," he said quietly. He didn't think they would thank him for his guesses just then. "Come on. We can't stop."

He forged forward again. The snow was less deep beneath the trees, but he still felt slow, too slow, and his worry grew as he tried to keep one eye on the trail and another on the forest to the side, watching for any sign of motion. Keith and Ari stayed much closer behind him now, and he could feel their nervousness as much as he heard their breathing.

"What's that?"

Sam looked ahead to where Keith was pointing. It was a dark shape lying on the snow, unmoving.

"Dean!" He sprinted forward, nearly slipping and pitching headfirst into the drifts. "Dean! Are you okay? Dean!"

Dean was curled on his side at the base of a tree, his arms wrapped over his head and his hands clenched into fists. Sam fell to his knees beside him and reached out. "Dean, hey, come on man, wake up." He pulled Dean's arms away from his head; there was blood on his face, most of it from his nose, and a small cut on his temple. Sam's heart stopped and he could scarcely breathe. "Dean, come on, wake up, come on..."

Slowly, Dean's eyes fluttered open. "Sammy?"

Sam nearly laughed out loud with relief. "Hey, Dean. Come on, we've gotta get you up."

"Nah," Dean said, moving one hand awkwardly; in the glow from the flashlights, his exposed skin was nearly as pale as the snow. "'S'alright." His voice was thick and slurred, and his eyes were unfocused.

"He's hypothermic," Ari said, crouching down on the other side of Dean. "We have to get him inside now."

"Right." Sam hooked his hands under Dean's armpits, rambling anxiously as he pulled Dean up. "Okay, man, up now. What the fuck are you doing out here? Can you walk?"

"M'leg," Dean mumbled. He winced and swayed unsteadily when Sam let go of him. "Stupid f'cking cat," he added, closing his eyes.

"Which leg?" Ari ran his hands along Dean's snow-caked jeans, pulling back suddenly when Dean grimaced and let out a pained groan. "Shit. Well, his leg is hurt."

"What's wrong with it?" Sam asked.

"I can't tell, but we have to get him inside now, even if he can't walk. Keith, help us...Keith?"

Keith took two steps toward them, leaning down, then froze. He was staring into the forest behind Sam, his eyes wide with fear.

Sam turned slowly, one hand going to the stun gun in his jacket.

Behind him, about fifteen feet away, a shadow was standing in the trees. It was shaped vaguely like a man, with indistinct limbs and pale, bright eyes.

Even as Sam's gaze fell on it, it began to fade, sinking backward, blending with the snow and darkness as if it was had never been there at all.

"What the hell..."

Sam looked back at Ari, then up at Keith. "Hurry." His own voice shook as he spoke, and when he reached out for Dean again his hands were trembling. "We have to get inside."


	6. Chapter 6

_Warm._

That was the first thought that made sense, snapping into Dean's mind loud and clear after the confused racket of _god damn it's fucking cold out here_ and _shit that hurts_ had faded. Through the muddled confusion of cold and pain, there were distant voices he might have been imagining, more cold and more pain, the unpleasant sensation of being carried bodily and not being able to stop it, and then, finally, _warm_.

Some part of his mind reminded him that warm might be a bad thing. A story he remembered, about a guy who got caught in a snowstorm and fell asleep under the drifts because his mind tricked him into thinking he was warm. Froze solid like a popsicle, wasn't found until spring. Not a fun way to go.

So he figured he maybe ought to get up, go inside or something, and he started to struggle upright. But the second he tried to dig his heels into the ground, a sharp, fiery pain exploded in his left leg, shooting from his foot to his hip, and he fell back, clenching his teeth to keep from crying out. Didn't want to let that goddamned thing know--

"Dean? You awake?"

\--where he was, it could still be around somewhere, could be coming back any minute. He had to get out of here, even if walking seemed to be out of the question. _Fuck_.

"Dean? Hey, man, stop trying to move."

_Fuck_. Cold, hurt leg, Sammy wouldn't shut up -- that wasn't right. That had already happened. Been there, done that, spent a few weeks asking pretty girls to sign the cast. Stupidest fucking thing, couldn't even get his first broken bone hunting or doing anything useful, just getting stuck at the bottom of a dog pile on the dirt lot behind the school. Football game. Dad hadn't even believed it -- _broke his leg playing on the playground? what the hell were they playing, anyway?_\--

"Yeah, he is. Just...just let me talk to him first, okay?"

\--but it hadn't been too bad, spending a month ordering Sammy around like a little maid. Get me a Coke, get me a sandwich--

"Dean, c'mon man, wake up."

_Well, fine, brat. If that's what you want._

Dean opened his eyes and waited for the world to come into focus.

Funny. He didn't remember their living room being quite so yellow.

"Dean?"

And he didn't remember Sam being quite so -- _Oh. Fuck._

"Yeah," he said, and cringed at the weak croak that escaped his lips

"Do you...um, do you know where you are? Do you know what year it is?"

"Ninety-three, right? And you're Pamie Peterson. Biggest boobs in the ninth grade."

Sam's face was out of focus, too close, but Dean could still see him roll his eyes. "Right. I guess that means you're awake now."

"Yeah, I'm -- Sam, what the hell?" Dean was definitely awake now. Sam was lying beside him, watching him with an expression that suggested he expect Dean to pass out again any second. Dean shoved Sam's arm off his chest and scowled. "What're you doing?"

Sam pulled away and sat up, sitting cross-legged on the bed beside Dean. "You have hypothermia, you moron. I was warming you up. You know, body heat?"

Well, that explained a lot, including his current state of mostly-undress. "You couldn't find a cute chick to do the cuddling?"

"I tried, man, but there were no volunteers." There was no humor in Sam's voice, and Dean watched the look of stupid relief on Sam's face shift into something else -- something more wary. He knew what Sam's next question would be even before he opened his mouth. "What the hell happened, Dean? What were you doing out there?"

He thought about it for several seconds, trying to order his confused thoughts. Snow, cold, shadows. More snow, the cold vice-grip of fingers around his leg, sudden agonizing pain, branches and ice and darkness.

But Sam would make him start at the beginning.

"That goddamned cat," he said.

"Cat?" Sam looked almost comically bewildered. "What cat?"

Dean sighed and reached up to rub his face. His nose was stuffy and sore, not quite broken but bruised like hell, and he still felt cold. It was deep chill that settled in his bones with no intention of leaving, while his skin felt raw and hot to the touch. And his leg hurt. His leg fucking hurt, hurt so bad that when he tried to wiggle his toes, just as a test, it was like a hot iron jabbed right into the bone below his knee. He clenched his teeth and hissed.

"Your leg is broken."

Surprised, Dean turned his head to the side and realized for the first time that there were other people in the room. Brooke and Keith were sitting in the chairs by the window, though they both stood up when he glanced at them. That kid Ari was leaning against the wall by the door. There was a roaring fire in the fireplace, and Dean felt as though he had about a foot of yellow blankets piled on top of him. He tried to shift upward; he hated lying on his back when there were people all around, but the pain in his leg and Sam's hand on the blankets stopped him.

Ari was the one who continued, "We splinted it, but that's about all we can do for now."

"Well, that...sucks," Dean said.

"It's probably the exact same place you broke it when you were fourteen," Sam told him. Then he said again, "Dean, what happened?"

There was something in Sam's voice that gave him pause, something about the way the others exchanged worried glances across the room.

"Why?" Dean said slowly. "Did something happen here while I was outside?"

Sam hesitated, then said, "Just tell us what you remember."

It was the same voice Sam used to talk to people they met on the job, people they needed to con or convince into believing something, the voice he used to tell little old ladies it wasn't their fault their sons had come back from the dead as axe murderers, to tell scared teenagers it really wasn't a good idea to go around casting summoning spells without knowing what they were summoning, to tell Dean that it was totally okay the plane they were on was minutes away from crashing.

It was the same voice he'd used to talk to Dean as they drove away from Las Vegas, quiet and soothing and maddeningly calm, until Dean had finally snapped and told Sam to shut the fuck up and let him sleep.

That voice, Dean knew, was a really bad sign.

"I left dinner," Dean said, staring up at the elk head above the fireplace. "Came down here, and the Alvarez's younger daughter, Myra, was down by the door."

"Right after you left dinner?" Sam asked, frowning slightly.

"Yeah. She asked--"

"You didn't come in here first, or go anywhere else?"

"No. Why?"

"Nothing. Just...just go on."

"She asked me to help her find her stupid cat," Dean explained. "She said he was outside--"

"The cat was outside? In the snow?"

Dean glared at Sam. "Stop interrupting me if you want to hear this. Yes, outside. That's what she said. Animal abuse, maybe, but not impossible, so I said I'd go look under the porch, figured it would only take a second...what is it? Sam?"

Sam was staring down at Dean like he'd never seen him before, and Dean really hated not knowing what the look meant. Sam made a face, almost like a grimace, and said, "It's...that' s not what she said happened."

"What did she say?" Dean asked carefully. From the way Sam was squirming, he wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer.

"Just...just go on. You went outside?"

"Yeah. I figured I'd just check under the porch."

"Without a flashlight?"

Dean shrugged and winced. His arms and shoulders were sore from being smacked and dragged around by that thing, and he wanted to sit up but didn't think the agony would be worth it. "I thought of that as soon as I got to the steps and the little brat slammed the door."

There it was again, that peculiar grimace on Sam's face, this time with a quick glance around the room at the others. They were all listening, watching Dean, but they stayed a few feet away from the bed.

"I think she thought it was funny," Dean went on. She'd been making faces at him through the window as she turned the deadbolt and turned off the porch light. "She was laughing, like it was a game. I knocked and shouted for her to let me back in, but she just ran up the stairs. Nobody else seemed to hear, and I couldn't get a cell signal to call you, so I decided to go around to the front."

"Was she...how was she acting?"

Brooke took a few steps forward. "Sam, what do you mean?"

But Dean understood. "You mean was she possessed?" When Sam nodded, Dean sighed. "I don't know. She wasn't acting all that strange, just sounded like a kid. Like a little brat, sure, but if being a brat means she was possessed, then you spent your entire childhood with a demon in you. I didn't even think of it--" Dean stopped. More to himself than to Sam, he added, "It's kind of weird that I didn't think of it."

"Yeah," Sam agreed quietly. "That's not like you."

"Why is that weird?" Brooke stepped even closer, though she was still looking at Dean warily. Dean noticed that she was holding one of their stun guns in her hand, awkwardly, as though she didn't even like pointing it at the floor. "Sam?"

Questions, guns, that look on Sam's face, the way the others were watching him but not standing too close to the bed..._shit_. This wasn't good. But Dean was familiar enough with Sam's stubbornness to know that they wouldn't tell him what the hell was going on until he finished his side of the story.

"Didn't think of it until that thing grabbed me," Dean went on. "Then I realized that maybe it had been a trap." A trap that he'd walked right into, like a fucking idiot amateur taking a stroll through the woods. He scrubbed his hand over his face again, trying to remember what the hell he had been thinking. Not an easy task, since he was pretty sure he hadn't been doing much thinking at all. "Anyway, when nobody came to the door, I walked around the front, peeked in some of the windows, but didn't see anyone."

"We followed your tracks," Sam said. "Why did you go out to the parking lot?"

Before Dean could answer, the door opened and David came in, accompanied by a flurry of agitated voices from the hallway. He was carrying a steaming mug, and he pulled the door shut behind him before stepping forward to set the mug on the nightstand beside Dean. Then he stepped back again quickly, almost nervously, and said, "The phones are out. Rick tried to call the police, but the lines are down and there's no cell phone signal anywhere. He said that's not unusual--"

"Police?" Dean looked from David to Sam, confused. Police, he'd said, not an ambulance, not a doctor, not that any of them could make it out here. "Why does he want to call the police?"

"You don't _know_?" David asked incredulously. "What did you expect him to do, after what you did to his kid?"

Dean felt a chill run through him, one that had nothing to do with the lingering effects of hypothermia. He stared at David for several seconds, then looked back to Sam.

"After what I did?"

Sam took a deep breath. "Myra said that you shouted at her and threatened her and tried to drag her outside, and that's why she locked you out."

Dean was shaking his head before Sam even finished. "No. No, Sammy, I didn't do that. I just told her I'd find her fucking cat." _Fuck_. That explained the stun gun in Brooke's hand, the way the others were watching him, Sam's careful questions..._Fuck_. Dean used his arms and good leg to push himself up and started talking, ignoring the pain in his leg, saying whatever he could think of to get that suspicious look off Sam's face. "Sam, I didn't do anything to her. It's gone -- you know it's gone, you made sure of it. You did the exorcism, you never mess those up. Get the holy water, test me if you don't -- you _know_ it's gone--"

"What's he talking about?" David asked, his voice rising.

Dean ignored him. "Sammy, you've got to listen to me. It's gone. I know, I can feel it. Whatever's going on here, it's different. You've got to -- I'm not the one who's possessed here. It must be that -- that girl, or that thing of the woods, or -- I don't know, I don't know what the hell is going on but I didn't--" He looked down, noticed that his hands were fisted around the yellow sheets, his knuckles white. "You don't believe me," he finished softly.

There was a long silence. In the hallway, people were still talking, voices rising and falling, their words indistinguishable.

"Yeah, I do," Sam said finally. "I know you didn't do anything."

Dean's panic faded and relief flooded through him. The others were still staring at him suspiciously, but he slumped against the headboard, muttering, "_Ow_," when his head hit the wood.

Smiling slightly, Sam reached out. "Here," he said, helping Dean sit forward and adjusting the pillows behind him. "Besides, I tried the holy water while you were unconscious. Okay, so, after you were locked out?"

"Wait, wait," Keith said. "Sam, what are you talking about?"

Brooke added, "That little girl said--"

"I know what she said," Sam snapped, whipping his head around to look at Brooke. "Look, it's complicated, but...you just have to trust me here. Dean, what happened after you were locked out?"

"Right." Dean settled back against the pillows and frowned. "I started to go around to the front, but then I saw somebody out in the parking lot."

"Who?"

"I don't know. Some woman. It looked like she was trying to knock the snow off one of the cars, and she asked for help."

"Dean..."

Dean closed his eyes. "I know, I know. I don't know why I--" He thought about standing out in the cold, pissed off because he had to slog through the snow, pissed off at the little brat who'd locked him out, pissed off at the snow and Sam's friends and no dinner and everything else, but never once considering that it not might be a woman out there. She'd been wearing a coat and hat, walking awkwardly through the snow, nothing at all strange about her. _Hey, can you give me a hand?_ "I didn't even think about it," he said, knowing just how stupid that sounded. "I just went down there."

"But she was gone."

"Yeah. No tracks, either. So I looked around a little bit, and I was about to go back when that _thing_ hit me." Dean reached up and fingered his sore nose, scowling. It appeared out of nowhere, just a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye. "Never even saw it coming. I was out of it for...I dunno, a little bit, and then it was dragging me through the snow."

"Was it--" Keith was standing behind Brooke, looking over her shoulder, his eyes wide. "We saw something out there."

"Shadowy? Man-shaped? Glowy eyes?" Dean asked.

"Yep, that was it," Sam confirmed, and Keith nodded hesitantly. "You have any idea what it was?"

"What _what_ was?" David asked.

"Nah, not really," Dean said to Sam. "Could've been a spirit, but I didn't get a good look at it." He'd been too busy being dragged through the snow to pay too much attention.

"That was...who we saw out there?" Ari said, stepping up to stand beside David. "It looked like--"

"Just like you said. Some shadowy guy," Keith said firmly.

"Who? Who would be out there in this storm?" Brooke paused, then looked at Dean. "Besides you, I mean."

"Whoa, wait," David broke in. "Back up here. Okay, even _if_ there was someone outside, why would the girl lie about what happened?"

Dean started to answer, but Sam spoke first: "Maybe it wasn't her doing the lying." He swung his legs down and stood up. "Let's find out."

"What are you doing?" David asked.

"I'm going to go talk to her," Sam replied, kneeling down to tie his shoes. "See what she has to say."

"I don't know if that's a good idea," Brooke said uncertainly. "The Alvarezes are pretty upset."

Sam unzipped one of the duffel bags and began rooting around in it. "Yeah, well," he said, glancing up at Dean quickly, "so am I. Look, we've got to make this room safe." He stood up and shoved a canister of salt into Keith's hands, then pointed at Dean. "Don't argue."

Dean held up his hands, amused. "I'm not."

"You can't even walk, and we don't know what's out there--"

"Dude, I'm not arguing."

"And drink that tea David brought. You're supposed to drink hot liquids."

"Fine, fine. Whatever. But, Sam, I'd feel better with..." Dean paused. David was still watching him suspiciously, but he went on regardless, "With something in my hands."

Sam met his gaze and nodded. "Right. Okay." He went through the duffel bag again, brought out one of their sawed-off shotguns, and tossed it over to Dean. "I'm going to talk to the Alvarezes."

"Are you out of your mind?" David grabbed Sam's arm as he started toward the door. "You're giving him a _gun_?"

There were times, Dean thought, when it was damn annoying that his little brother had a few inches on him and everyone else in the world.

And then there were times when it was actually pretty cool.

"Yes," Sam said simply, straightening his shoulders and looking David in the eye. "I am. Anyway, it's loaded with rock salt, not bullets. For ghosts, not people. Now, do you want to hear what this girl has to say or not?"

Sam brushed by David and opened the door, stepped out into the hallway. David cast one more bewildered glance at Dean before following; Brooke hurried after them, shutting the door behind her.

Dean set the gun on the bedspread beside him and leaned his head back on the pillows, closed his eyes and let out a long, slow breath. He tried to remember where their first aid kit was and just what kind of meds they had in there. It had been a while since they'd borrowed supplies from a hospital or clinic, but they had to have something to dull the throbbing pain in his leg.

"Um. Dean?"

He opened his eyes again.

Keith was still standing in the middle of the room, holding the can of salt. "What do I do with this?"


	7. Chapter 7

There was still a group of people gathered in the hallway, and they all stopped talking when Sam stepped out of the yellow room. The Alvarezes' teenage daughter had joined her parents; she was leaning against the opposite door with her arms crossed over her chest.

Sam took a deep breath. "He's awake now," he told them.

"And?" Rick asked. "What does he have to say for himself?"

"Somebody attacked him, outside by the parking lot."

"Attacked!" Judy cried. "What do you mean?"

"Are you sure?" Rick added. "How do you know he didn't just fall?"

"Yes, I'm sure," Sam said impatiently. "His leg is broken, he was dragged in the woods, and he might have a concussion from being whacked over the head. He didn't just _fall_."

"But who could be out there in this weather?"

Sam turned, startled. The newlyweds, Mr. and Mrs. Kaufman, were standing in the doorway of their room, listening in on the conversation. It was Mrs. Kaufman who had spoken, though she sounded more excited than worried.

Sam hesitated. "I don't know. Dean didn't get a clear look. We saw...somebody when we were out there, too, but..."

"Maybe it was a bear?" Mrs. Kaufman offered, almost hopefully.

"Bears hibernate in the winter, dear," her husband told her, and the older Alvarez daughter snorted with amusement.

"No." Sam shook his head. "What we saw was definitely not a bear. Can you tell me--" He turned back to Rick and Judy, considering his words carefully. "How many people are in the hotel now?"

Judy frowned. "You don't think it was one of our guests or staff, do you?"

"I don't know who it was," Sam answered, "but it was somebody. Or something." He watched Judy's reaction closely, but she didn't so much as flinch. "Are there any neighbors close enough to walk in this weather?"

"Not a chance," Rick said.

"And everybody in the hotel is accounted for?"

"Of course they are. This is ridiculous." Judy put a protective arm around Myra's shoulders. "I won't let you accuse an innocent person on the word of a man who is obviously _disturbed_ in the mind."

Anger and annoyance flared, but Sam forced himself to keep his voice even when he responded. "There is nothing wrong with my brother's mind," he said slowly. "In fact, I want to ask Myra some questions about what happened earlier."

"Absolutely not. How dare you suggest that she's lying--"

"Oh, please." The teenage girl interrupted her mother with a disdainful scoff. "Whatever she said, she's making it up."

"Melanie..." Judy said warningly.

Sam blinked and turned to Melanie. "She's -- what? What do you mean?"

"Myra," the girl said, glaring at her younger sister. "Whatever she said, she's totally making it up."

Rick sighed. "Melanie, don't start this again."

"Well, she _is_," Melanie insisted. "She lies all the time, about everything. She lied about Mom's wedding dress, and she lied about breaking the window in the cabin. She lied about--"

"Melanie!" Judy repeated. "That's enough!"

"You never believe me!" Melanie shouted back, and she turned to storm away.

"No, wait, wait," Sam said quickly, reaching out to catch her arm. Rick stepped toward him, tried to shove Sam's hand away, but Melanie just stopped and waited. Sam asked her, "What do you mean? Does she...does she do things and then say she doesn't remember doing them?"

Melanie shrugged. "Usually she just plays dumb, like she has no idea what I'm talking about even when I catch her. And _they_\--" she sneered at her parents "--always believe her, because she's the _baby_."

"Catch her doing what?" Sam asked. "You said she broke a window?"

"Yeah." Melanie tossed her hair and straightened her shoulders. "Out in the cabin, back in October. She said something else did it, but I saw her taking a hammer out of the garage--"

"Which cabin?" Sam asked, glancing at Brooke. "The farthest one out?"

"Yeah, the old one that Dad just fixed up. It was a new window. It wasn't a _bird_ that broke it, Dad," Melanie said, rolling her eyes. "And she also took Mom's wedding dress out of the attic and ripped it. She said it was one of the maids, and Mom fired her. And she broke Grandma's antique mirror and blamed that on Baxter." Melanie rolled her eyes dramatically again. "I _saw_ her knock it off the wall, but _they_ believed that the stupid cat was chasing a moth."

Sam glanced at both Alvarez parents. Judy was still glaring at her older daughter, her mouth set in a disapproving frown, but Rick was looking down at Myra, his expression uncertain. Myra's bangs were falling over her face, hiding it from view.

Kneeling down in front of her, Sam said, "Myra? Is what your sister said true?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Judy snapped. "She's--"

But her husband cut her off. "Judy, just...just wait."

Sam said again, "Myra?"

Myra only shrugged, refusing to look up. Her manner, Sam noticed, was completely different than it had been before. Earlier, she had looked him straight in the eye and spoken clearly, and he had come out here prepared to shout at her and shake her and make her tell the truth. Now, she looked meek and small, like she didn't want to speak at all, and he felt vaguely guilty.

_Big red flags that there's something funny about the kid,_ remarked a voice in his head that sounded an awful lot like Dean. For once Sam agreed with it.

"Did you lie about what happened earlier?"

She shrugged again.

"Do you remember what happened?"

Another shrug.

Sam sighed. He had never understood Dean's patience with kids, but he wished he had a little bit of it now. "Do you remember talking to a man by the door?"

She finally nodded and said after a moment, in a very small voice, "I told him Baxter was outside."

"What? Told who?"

Sam looked up at Judy. "Told Dean. That's what he said she said to him." To Myra, he said, "Why did you tell him that? Was Baxter outside?"

"No. Baxter hates the snow."

"So why did you say it?"

"I dunno."

"Did he--" Sam hesitated. _Sorry, Dean._ "Did he yell at you?"

"No. He went outside."

"Why did you say he yelled at you?"

"I dunno."

Melanie twirled her hair around her finger. "I _told_ you so," she said, smirking at her parents.

"Myra," Rick said, kneeling beside his younger daughter. "Myra, is that really what happened?"

Myra nodded

"Why did you lie?"

"'Cause she's a big fat liar," Melanie offered.

"Melanie, that's enough." Judy tugged on Myra's arm, pulling her a few steps away. "Come on, girls, both of you. We're going upstairs now."

Rick stood up quickly. "Judy--"

"I said that's _enough_," Judy snapped. "Girls, come on."

She turned and led her daughters down the hall. Myra followed meekly, staring down at the floor again, and Melanie gave Sam a smile and a little wave as she walked away.

"I don't understand." Rick turned to Sam. "Why would she lie about that? Are you sure she's making it all up?"

"Look, I know my brother," Sam said, leaning against the wall. "He would cut his own arm off before he hurt a little kid."

Brooke spoke up. "He also said...didn't he say he'd met Myra as soon as he left dinner?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah, right. That was probably half an hour, forty minutes before they--" he gestured toward the Kaufmans "--found her." He shivered, thinking of how long Dean had been out in the snow, unable to walk or call for help. He had the sudden urge to open the yellow door again, just to make sure Dean was still warm and safe inside, but he stopped himself. He had to concentrate on the task at hand, and besides, Dean would never stop making fun of him if he knew that Sam was worrying like a little old lady.

"Why would she wait to say something?" David asked.

Rick began shaking his head. "I don't believe it. Was she really -- you expect me to believe she was just playing a game?"

"What Melanie said, about Myra lying...does she do that often? You must have noticed."

Several seconds passed before Rick answered. "I've always thought she was just imaginative and absentminded," he said finally.

That sounded like a _yes_ to Sam. He thought about pointing out that "imaginative and absentminded" were hardly traits that led a little girl to break windows and mirrors and accuse innocent men of horrible things, but he bit his tongue. He needed more information from Rick, and antagonizing the man further wouldn't accomplish that.

"Have you ever noticed...anything strange happening? Around Myra or not?"

Rick looked at him steadily. "You asked me something like that earlier today."

"I'm asking again. Strange noises, things that seem to move..."

Mrs. Kaufman put in, "Your website does say the hotel is haunted." Then she added quickly, "Not that I believe in that stuff."

Rick sighed. "Look, my wife has lived here her entire life, and she says there's nothing to the stories, okay? It's an old place, and people talk, but--"

The lights went out.

"Um..." That was Mr. Kaufman, a few feet down the hall.

In the darkness, Rick's voice was loud and clear. "Well, shit."

~

"Natural or supernatural power outage?" Dean asked.

Sam was searching through one of the bags in the light from the fire and the flashlight Keith was holding. "I don't know. Could just be branches falling on power lines, like Rick says."

Rick was still in the hallway, trying to calm the Kaufmans down and explain that they were unlikely to freeze to death in rooms with firewood and propane heaters. He didn't seem to think there was anything unusual about the power outage; they happened often enough, Rick explained, that he'd been considering installing a backup generator for the hotel as part of his renovations.

"Or it could be something else," Dean said.

"Yeah." Sam tucked a rock-salt loaded gun into his waistband and flicked on a flashlight. He pointed the beam at Keith. "You still have the salt?" Without waiting for an answer, he continued, "Do your room and Brooke's room next."

"What good will salt do?" David asked from the doorway. "If there's a dangerous person out there, I don't see how _condiments_ are--"

Sam ran a hand through his hair. "If the dangerous person is a ghost, salt will repel it." When David started to speak again, Sam held up his hand. "I know you don't believe it. I know you think we're crazy. And you know what? _I don't fucking care._ I have no idea what's going on, but I do know that it'll be a lot easier and everybody will be a lot safer if you just shut the hell up and do as I say, because no matter what's happening, you are _way_ out of your league here, okay?"

David stared at Sam for a few seconds, his mouth open to respond, but he said nothing. He glanced at Brooke, who only shrugged, and at Keith, who held up the canister of salt and said, "Don't leave home without it."

Sam turned back to the bed, saw that Dean was smirking in that annoying way of his, and added, "You shut up, too."

"I didn't say anything. What are you going to do?"

"Ask Rick for a tour of the place. It's about time I took a look around, don't you think?"

Dean nodded in approval. "And, hey, while you're out, snag a bottle of Jack from the bar, would you? Something to take the edge off."

Sam paused and looked at Dean more closely. In the red glow of the fire, he could see a faint sheen of sweat on Dean's face, the rigid set to his jaw and neck and shoulders, the way one hand was gripping the shotgun tightly and the other was closed around the edge of the blanket. He noticed that somebody had found their first aid kit and scattered the contents on the table by the window.

"Nothing stronger than aspirin in there?" he said.

Dean shrugged. "Been a while since we knocked over a hospital. We'd make lousy drug dealers."

"I'll see if I can find anything. And try to find out what the heck Rick isn't telling us. And...and I'll be back soon."

Dean released the edge of the blanket and waved his hand. "Go."

In the corridor, Rick was patiently explaining to the elderly couple in the next room why he had woken them from their peaceful slumber just to shine a flashlight in their faces and tell them that the power was out. They adjusted their bathrobes and glared at him over their spectacles as they shut the door.

Sam walked over to Rick. "You didn't answer my question before. How many people are in the hotel?"

Rick looked up and down the hall thoughtfully, then began ticking the names off on his finger. "Mr. and Mrs. Morton, you just saw. Mr. Buck is at the end of the hall, across from Mrs. Svitski, but I think they're both still in the restaurant. That's all the guests. The staff who are stranded here are staying in the other rooms."

Too many people, Sam thought, too many people asking questions and moving around and making things complicated. "We have to make sure they're all accounted for," he said.

"_We?_" Rick shook his head. "No, listen, you wait here. I'll go to the restaurant, check on the staff and the other guests, get candles and flashlights from the kitchen--"

"Mr. Alvarez." Sam inhaled slowly. "Someone -- or something -- attacked my brother, and trust me when I say that Dean isn't the easiest person to take down in a fight. Whether or not you think there's anything...strange going on here, you have to realize it's a really bad idea for _anybody_ to be walking around alone in the dark."

"But that was outside--"

"It's still a bad idea. I'm going with you."

For a second, Sam thought Rick would argue further, but he nodded curtly. "Fine."

Their footsteps echoed on the hardwood floor as they walked toward the restaurant, every sound amplified. When Sam glanced back, he could see the glow of the fires through the open doors, the moving white of the flashlights, and the shadowy figures of the people still standing in doorways, but even just ten or twenty paces made everyone seem much farther away, dwarfed by the darkness all around.

He shook himself and faced forward again. This was not the time to be letting his mind wander.

The piano room was empty, the hearth cold and dark. Through the tall windows, the night outside seemed almost light compared to the dark inside. Sam could hear the patter of snowflakes on the windows, the ticking of a clock on the wall, and voices from inside the restaurant. Rick glanced at Sam, then wordlessly checked the lock on the front door; the deadbolt was still in place.

The fire in the restaurant was burning, reflected red and warm on all the windows and polished wood tabletops. When he and Rick entered they found a group of people gathered around it, chairs pulled up close and candles set on nearby tables. They were chatting and laughing easily, with none of the tension or wariness of the others down the hall. Sam realized that they probably had no idea that anything worse had happened than the lights going out.

Nancy stood up when they came in. "Mr. Alvarez, there you are."

"Just came to see if everybody is okay and grab some candles from the back room," Rick said. "I hate to tell you guys, but it's likely the power will be out at least until morning. The phones are down, too, and even if we could contact the town it would be some time before they could get to them."

"Not to worry, son," one of the men sitting by the fire said, raising a nearly-empty wine glass. "It's just another adventure for us."

Sam said to Rick, "Is this everyone?"

"Everyone who?" Nancy asked, puzzled.

"Yeah," Rick replied. "This is all the staff that was stuck here when the storm started. Nancy, Julian--" he pointed to a man in a white cook's smock "--and Nicole." Nicole was the young woman who had been working at the bar earlier. Rick added, "And these are the other two guests, Mr. Buck and Mrs. Svitski. This is it. Everyone is accounted for."

Julian, the chef, swung his feet down from the chair they were resting on and asked, "Why wouldn't everybody be accounted for?"

Mrs. Svitski added, "We've all been here since before the lights went out."

Sam looked at Mrs. Svitski curiously for a few moments; she was an older woman with curly hair, dressed in an R.E.I. wardrobe from head to foot. Her name sounded familiar, but he didn't think he'd ever seen her before.

Rick hesitated before answering. "One of the guests -- this man's brother -- went outside and was...attacked."

"Attacked!" Nancy gasped. "By what? Is he hurt?"

"By an animal, or a person, or..."

"Some madman out in the woods?" Nicole said, making a disbelieving face.

"Or a ghost," Mrs. Svitski said with confidence.

"Mrs. Svitski..." Rick began.

"Oh, don't be silly, young man. I've been coming here for years, and you know as well as I do the living aren't the only ones who walk these halls."

Julian and Nicole rolled their eyes with amusement, but Sam saw that Nancy was wringing a napkin nervously in her hands.

Rick waved his flashlight impatiently. "Mrs. Svitski. Everybody. Just...okay, listen. I don't know what happened out there, but somebody is hurt pretty bad and I've got to get candles and flashlights to the rooms. Nancy, Julian, finish cleaning up here, and get everybody back to their rooms. You, come on." He looked at Sam and jerked his head toward the door that led into the kitchen.

The door swung shut behind them, and their flashlights cast dancing light over countertops and copper pots, appliances and rows of cans. Rick walked straight over to a pantry door and pulled it open, crouched down and began searching through boxes on the low shelves.

Sam poked around the kitchen, pointing his flashlight into corners, opening drawers at random, looking out the windows into the swirling snow. There was a door leading to the back of the hotel, but it was locked.

"You know there's a ghost here," Sam said, glancing over his shoulder at Rick.

Through the pantry doorway, he saw Rick straighten up a bit.

"You know that strange things happen, and stories don't come from nowhere. Things moving around, lights flickering, guests hearing things..."

Rick stood up, a box tucked under his arm. "People have active imaginations," he said, "especially when they come here expecting to see a ghost."

Sam shook his head, smiling crookedly. "Come on. It's more than that. It's just never hurt anyone before, has it?"

With a sigh, Rick set the box on the counter and opened it; it was full of long white candles. "My wife...tells stories of things that used to happen when she was a kid. But her parents had somebody come, an...expert of some sort. And he took care of it. Judy says there has never been a single problem since."

"Do you believe that?"

"I believe that folks are going to be anxious and worried enough stuck here without phones or electricity until the damn plows get through," Rick said, closing the candle box again and returning to the pantry. "We don't need to scare them with ghost stories too."

"Mr. Alvarez, one of your ghosts tried to kill my brother. I think maybe people have a good reason to be scared."

"And what the hell can we do about it?" Rick asked. He emerged from the pantry again, holding about five flashlights, and began switching them on and off, testing the batteries. "Even if there is a ghost -- which there _isn't_ \-- it's a ghost. What should we do, call in another psychic-cleanser expert? You can't fight a ghost."

"Well, yes, actually, we can," Sam corrected him. "But we need more information. What's in room eight upstairs?"

Rick looked at him, surprised. "What? Nothing. Just storage."

"It's not a guest room for the hotel?"

"No, it never has been. The window is too small for the safety codes, and I haven't gotten around to replacing it yet, so we use it for storage. We hardly ever go in there. Why?"

"Storage of what?" Sam pressed, leaning on the counter. A room full of old junk that nobody ever went into sounded promising; Dean would be glad to know he'd been on the right track the night before.

"Old junk. Nothing important. You want to tell me why you're so interested?"

"My brother thinks that your ghost -- or one of your ghosts -- lives in that room."

"Your brother thinks?" Rick repeated. "What the hell does it matter what your brother thinks?"

"I guess you could say we're...experts of some sort," Sam replied. "And what about the cabin?"

"Which cabin?" But by the guarded way Rick asked, Sam knew that he already knew.

"The old one in the meadow, out--"

Sam gestured toward the window, then stopped abruptly and stared.

"--out there," he finished quietly. "Do you see that?"

He stepped over to the window, and Rick followed just behind him.

"What is that?" Rick whispered. "It looks like somebody--"

"--is hanging out in your cabin."

Sam switched off his flashlight. Across the meadow, through the heavy falling snow, he could see a light into the window of the distant cabin. It was faint and reddish in color, like the glow from a fire. As he watched, straining his eyes to see better, it vanished.

"What--"

Then it flared up again, shining brighter for several seconds, and winked out. It continued like that for nearly two minutes, flashing on and off randomly, then it went dark and stayed out.

Rick tried again, clearing his throat. "Who the hell could be out there?"

"Probably someone who's been there for a long time."

"That's ridiculous. I've never seen anything like that before, and I--"

Rick broke off sharply, looking upward. A moment later, Sam heard what had caught his attention.

The ceiling was creaking, the unmistakable sound of somebody walking overhead.

His voice low, Sam asked, "Any reason for anybody to be on the second floor?"

Rick shook his head.

"Well." Sam switched his flashlight back on and exhaled. "Mr. Alvarez, I think I'm going to take a look around your hotel, okay?"


	8. Chapter 8

"Now that's a nice healthy case of a denial if I've ever seen one."

Pacing in front the fire, Sam paused. He nudged the line of salt around the hearth with the toe of his shoe. "I don't know," he said. "I don't think that's all it is." When Dean raised an eyebrow in question, he explained, "I'm thinking maybe the ghost -- or ghosts -- really were quiet for a few years. Dormant, until something woke them up."

"Like what?" Keith was sprawled in one of the chairs by the window; Ari was in the other. Sam guessed that the thing they'd seen outside had spooked them more than they were willing to admit, because they both seemed to have set their skepticism aside in favor of asking him and Dean numerous questions about the hows and whys of ghost-hunting. Sam was pretty sure the guys didn't believe everything, but at least they were listening.

"The renovations," Dean said, rubbing a hand tiredly over his face and wincing. He looked pale and drawn in the candlelight, uncomfortably and awkwardly leaning against the headboard, but Sam knew better than to say anything.

Sam nodded. "Yeah. Both upstairs and out in the cabin. It makes sense."

"It could be that the so-called expert Rick told you about was the real deal and managed some sort of temporary bind," Dean went on thoughtfully. "Too bad you didn't ask the wife about it."

"She'd already gone upstairs, and it's late. We can ask her tomorrow. Besides, if she was just a kid, I doubt she remembers much."

After they had heard the footsteps above the kitchen, Sam and Rick had gone up the staircase at the far end of the building. They had searched the rooms on the second floor, sweeping their flashlights over tools and piles of wood, starting at every sound, but they hadn't found anyone. Rick had suggested half-heartedly that it was probably just the old building settling, or maybe his wife another floor up, and he had gone back downstairs to deliver candles and flashlights to each of the rooms.

Sam had followed him, reasoning that it would be much easier to do a thorough search -- including breaking into room eight -- when the hotel owner wasn't breathing down his neck. He had returned to the yellow room to wait until everyone was settled in for the night. The guests and staff retired to their rooms quickly, bidding each other goodnight with worried glances, deadbolts clicking into place as each door closed.

It was a strange feeling, working a haunting with other people all around. It was even stranger to know they couldn't leave and regroup somewhere else, should things go wrong. It wasn't how they were used to working. Find the house, identify the ghost, get the people out, go in armed with salt and lighter fluid and everything else: that was their usual M.O., that was what worked.

Things were just a bit trickier with innocent bystanders hanging out in every room.

And with Dean unable to walk.

Sam could tell that he was restless, now that he was fully alert and things were happening outside the yellow room. Lying in bed inside the ring of salt while Sam did the creeping and poking around was not an arrangement that sat well with Dean -- nor with Sam, if he was honest with himself, but he did his best to hide it.

"Right." Sam resumed his pacing for a few steps, then turned on his heel, picked up the flashlight and EMF meter from the bed, and looked at Keith. "Ready?"

Keith jumped to his feet. "Yeah."

"Don't stay out too late, kids," Dean said.

Sam rolled his eyes. "And don't do anything you wouldn't do?"

In the firelight, Dean grinned crookedly. "That doesn't rule out much. Just...try not to get in any trouble."

Sam met his eyes and nodded.

He and Keith left the room, and Sam closed the door quietly behind them, shutting out the light from the fire with a soft, solid click. The hallway was quiet and deserted; he swept his flashlight beam up and down the walls and polished hardwood floor but saw nothing except closed doors. Firelight glowed very faintly beneath a couple of them, but there were no voices or other sounds from within.

Keith followed close behind Sam as they walked toward the end of the hall. The sound of their own footsteps and breathing was all Sam could hear. When they reached the base of the stairs he paused and listened for several seconds; bitter cold seeped through the window, raising goose bumps on his arms. Through the window he could see the trampled snow on the porch, the footprints now softened and filling in, but there was no movement, no shadows or lights in the storm outside. He turned away from the window and gazed up the stairs for several seconds, holding his breath to listen better, but there was nothing.

Sam unhooked the thin rope that blocked the staircase and took one step up. The wood groaned loudly in protest, and Keith jumped back with a gasped, "_Shit!_" followed by a quiet chuckle.

Sam cast a quick smile over his shoulder before climbing the stairs, each step creaking, the paneled walls and wooden railing feeling very close in the white circle of light from their flashlights. At the top of the stairs they stopped again. Sam pulled the EMF meter from his pocket and switched it on. Red lights blinked in the darkness, but the meter made no noise, not yet.

Holding the EMF meter in one hand and the flashlight in the other, Sam started down the hallway, Keith right behind him. They paused at each door -- most of which were still open from the quick search earlier -- pointing the flashlights into dark corners and closets. But they saw nothing suspicious and the EMF meter registered no signal.

When they reached room eight, Sam swept the meter around the closed door, then pocketed it and handed his flashlight to Keith. He made quick work of the clunky old lock, took his flashlight back and put his hand on the doorknob.

"Well," he whispered, glancing at Keith, "here goes."

Sam pushed the door open. It swung about six inches then stopped abruptly with a knock of wood on wood. Frowning, Sam aimed his flashlight through the opening; he saw piles of boxes and crates, picture frames and curtain rods leaning in one corner, a stack of chairs and the corner of a table: a haphazard jumble of junk, just as Rick has said. Leaning his shoulder against the door, Sam shoved it open a few more inches, pushing whatever heavy object was blocking it back. It stopped again and wouldn't budge, so he sucked in his breath and slipped through the doorway.

The door was blocked by a large trunk wedged against a rolltop desk. Sam motioned for Keith to follow him into the room. "Help me move this," he said, and they tugged the trunk out, giving the door room to swing freely.

Keith straightened up and looked around. "So...what are we looking for, exactly?"

Sam cast his flashlight over the messy piles and overflowing boxes. "I have no idea," he admitted.

The room wasn't small, but it was so crowded with stuff that there was very little free space. Besides the rolltop desk behind the door, there was a single narrow bed with dusty piles of linens and curtains on it, and a chest of drawers mostly hidden behind cardboard boxes with collapsing sides and torn flaps.

Keith was looking at him expectantly, so Sam shrugged and said, "I guess we're looking for something personal. Something that's not just stuff for the hotel." He pointed his flashlight at the bed. "This might've been somebody's room at some point. Why don't you start with the desk, and I'll..." He sighed, already feeling the dust tickle his nose. "I'll start with the boxes."

"Right." Keith rolled the desk open, sending up a swirl of dust in the beam of his flashlight, and went to work.

None of the boxes were labeled, so Sam began opening them at random He found china wrapped in newspaper, bathroom towels embroidered with the hotel's name, silverware and antique doorknobs and stationery and napkins. A few were filled with books -- history, mostly, everything from Ancient Greece to the Napoleonic Wars -- but nothing that seemed significant. The dresser drawers were empty.

Sam knelt down to open another box, but something under the bed caught his eye. Leaning down with his face close to the floor, he shone the flashlight under the bed, frowning. It was a crooked, disordered stack of wooden frames, as though somebody had shoved a bunch of pictures under the bed without looking to see what they were doing. He reached out and tugged on the corner of one.

Something dark skittered across his hand, and he jerked back with a startled cry.

"What?" Keith spun around, shining his flashlight directly in Sam's face. "What is it?"

His heart racing, Sam exhaled a laugh. "Spider," he said. "Fucking spider."

"Hope it's not a black widow. What's down there?"

"It's these frames..." As he spoke, he peered more closely at the space beneath the bed and recognized exactly what they were. "Paintings," he said. Some of them were framed; others were only canvases. The entire stack shifted and slid as he pulled one out and leaned it up against the bed. It was a panoramic mountain landscape, much like the painting in the piano room downstairs. "Mrs. Alvarez's brother is an artist."

"Is her maiden name Warrington?" Keith asked.

Sam looked up. "Yeah, it is."

"And his name was Ethan?"

"Yeah, it -- was?"

"Definitely _was_," Keith said. He tucked his flashlight under his armpit and held up a large book. "Family Bible. There's a list of births and deaths, and the last names on the list are Judy Warrington and Ethan Warrington. He died June 8th, 1972."

"Huh." Sam stood up and walked over to the desk. "Interesting. You find anything else?"

"Old guest registers, old bills. Not much else." Keith waved at the desk dismissively, then looked at Sam. "I was going to open that trunk, but it's locked."

Sam dropped to his knees in front of the trunk and pulled his tools from his pocket. "Well, that's easy enough."

"Useful skill you have there," Keith observed.

"You have no idea." The lock on the trunk popped easily, and Sam lifted the lid.

"Can I ask you something?" Keith said.

"Sure." Sam began sifting through the contents of the trunk. It was full of papers and books, jumbled up as though they had been tossed in hurriedly, without care where they landed, no organization to it.

Keith cleared his throat. "Earlier, when Dean was outside, you gave me the stun gun..."

Sam froze, his hand resting on the edge of the trunk.

"And then when he woke up, he said something about...about _it_ being gone and...and an exorcism?" Keith paused. He was pointing his flashlight at the contents of the trunk but looking at Sam. "What was that all about?"

With a sigh, Sam sat back on his heels and ran his hand through his hair. "The last job we were working," he began, staring blankly at the papers in the trunk without really seeing them.

They'd first caught wind of it while sitting in a diner in Window Rock, drinking coffee and paging through the newspapers they'd collected over the past few days. _Children missing._ Sam hadn't been paying much attention to what Dean was saying. _Authories baffled._ They were the only white faces in the place, and he could feel eyes on them from all around. He heard Dean say _Vegas_ and _our kind of thing_, and he agreed without hesitation, eager to get in the car and on the road and leave the suspicious glances behind. _Abducted girls found._ He didn't look at the articles himself until they were pulling away, cruising slowly between the government-built houses, listening to Dean grumble about the stray dogs darting across the road. _Victims show no sign of recovery._

Sam shook himself and lifted a few papers from the trunk. "He was possessed. Demon."

Keith's eyebrows shot up in disbelief. "Demon? Like...a real demon?"

"Yeah." Sam twisted his lips into a smile, though there was nothing amusing about it. "Demons are real. Just like in the movies. They take over a person's body, and he--" _Is stuck. No control. Gets to watch. Front row seat for the horror show._ "And it has to be exorcised."

"Is that..." Keith chewed his lip thoughtfully. "Is that like what happened to the little girl here? And maybe..." His voice trailed off.

Sam shook his head. "Not exactly. It seems like there's a spirit here making Myra do things she can't control, but it's not really the same thing." He thought about the differences between demonic and spirit possessions, wondering how Keith would react if he launched into one of his 'geek speeches', as Dean liked to call them.

"Only Myra?"

"And maybe...maybe Pepper, too," Sam said gently.

Keith thought about that for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah...but, actually, I was thinking...only Myra _now_?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, don't you think it's a little strange that the snow plows didn't make it up here today, even though Judy said she called them?"

Sam did think it was a little worrisome, but he said, "There could be a lot of reasons for that."

"I don't know, man," Keith replied. "Back during this big blizzard in '03, I was with a whole bunch of people snowed in at this ski resort outside Nederland, and it didn't take the plows more than a couple hours to get up there. And that road is a lot crazier than this one."

"You think Judy didn't call?"

Keith shrugged. "I just think it's strange."

"Rick's truck is out of commission too," Sam added. The knot of worry in his gut tightened. There was a difference between a spirit that took advantage of an unlucky situation and one that purposefully created a trap, and it was a difference that didn't mean anything good for them, any way he looked at it.

"Yeah. Anyway." Keith leaned back against the desk, sweeping his flashlight around the room casually. "Ari and I were talking, and we're thinking if the phones don't come back on, and if the Alvarezes have some snowshoes or cross-country skis around here, we can probably hike out."

"Wouldn't that be dangerous?" Sam asked, looking up in surprise. "It's a long way."

"Only seven miles." Keith shrugged. "We've both done longer winter treks before. We have a lot of gear in the car. It would be tough breaking the fresh snow, but it's not powder, and the road would be easy to follow. It would be a long day, but we could do it."

"It's not just the snow out there, you know," Sam reminded him.

Keith smiled grimly. "Yeah, I know. There's shadow-man, too. But...it's just an idea. Or maybe the phones will be back tomorrow."

"Maybe."

But Sam knew that neither of them believed it. He felt, all at once, the effects of the long day, a sudden wave of exhaustion washing over him. It was well after midnight and he'd been awake since before dawn, but he exhaled and leaned forward, picking through the contents of the trunk again. It was full of loose papers, news clippings and pages with lines of cramped writing, as well as a few leather-bound books and packets of letters tied up with string.

Sam opened one of the books out and leafed through it with one hand. The pages were covered with ink, rough sketches and complex drawings. There were trees and mountains, idyllic scenes and landscapes, interspersed with portraits: a little girl, a grim-faced woman, an old man almost always drawn alongside a horse.

"Ew. Look at this." Keith had crouched beside him and was looking through the loose papers in the trunk. He held up one, a tattered and folded page with a drawing on it. Keith pointed his flashlight at the page and turned it a few times. "What is it?"

"Rats?" Sam peered more closely at the drawing.

It was a cluster of rats in a thick pile, tails intertwined and bodies mashed together, too many to count. The creatures were gnawing on each others' ears, their small claws digging into each others' fur, all of their eyes squeezed shut.

"Um. Yuck."

"Yeah, no kidding."

Keith set the paper aside, and Sam went back to the leather book, turning a few more pages. There were drawings of the inn and the other buildings in the valley, of what he assumed were the hills surrounding it, and a few more sketches of different people. He was turning the pages quickly, ready to set the book aside when one of the drawings caught his eye.

Sam flipped back a couple of pages, blinking in the dim light. "Oh, my god."

"What is it?" Keith leaned over, looking at the book curiously.

It was a drawing of a young man with a smile on his face, leaning casually on a grand piano and looking off the left edge of the drawing.

"I saw this guy today," Sam said. He flipped to the front of the book, found _E. Warrington_ written in tiny script inside the front cover. "I don't believe it. I didn't even realize..." It hadn't even occurred to him that Rick hadn't named the piano player when he listing the people in the hotel.

"What?"

"I _talked_ to this guy today."

"He's here?"

Sam shook his head. "He looked the exact same. Same age. Same _shirt_. I don't fucking believe it."

"I don't...but didn't Ethan Warrington draw that?"

"It's his book."

"He died more than thirty years ago."

"Yeah. Exactly."

Keith stared at Sam, his face pale in the light from the flashlights. "You mean--"

The lid of the trunk slammed down, smashing onto Sam's right hand.

"_Fuck!_"

Sam snatched his hand back. The trunk snapped closed and the lock clicked into place.

"What the hell?" Keith stood up and backed away quickly, stumbling over a cardboard box.

Sam jumped to his feet, shaking his throbbing hand.

The door to the room swung shut, and both flashlights flickered. The EMF meter in Sam's pocket squealed; he switched it off, then drew his gun slowly, wincing as he closed his hand around it.

"Sam..."

"Wait." His breath misted in the sudden chill, and he gestured for Keith to be quiet.

They stood in silence for several seconds, listening and unmoving. The flashlights stopped flickering, but just as Sam reached out toward the door, he heard something: the quiet tap of footsteps in the hallway. The steps were slow, halting, creaking along the floorboards, approaching the room.

Sam glanced over his shoulder. Keith was staring at the door, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. He handed his flashlight to Keith and whispered, "I'm going to open--"

The lights winked out. Sam blinked several times in the sudden darkness. He heard Keith shake the flashlights in frustration, but he couldn't see anything except the gray rectangle of the small window on the far side of the room, high above the floor. He turned back to the door, groping blindly in the darkness, and took one hesitant step. He stubbed his foot into the trunk and stopped, instinctively looking down.

There was a faint orange glow on the floor. It was unsteady, wavering, but growing brighter as the footsteps came closer. Light beneath the door, Sam realized with a start. He stepped toward it, absurdly relieved to be able to see his own feet, and he reached out, fumbling for the doorknob in the darkness. The metal was cold to the touch, slick with frost, but it turned easily.

Sam raised his gun and opened the door.

He saw the candle first -- long white taper, tiny flickering flame -- and he heard a small, surprised, "_Oh!_" Then, as his eyes adjusted to the sudden light, he saw the person behind the candle.

Sam lowered his gun. "What the -- what are you doing here?"

Mrs. Svitski frowned, the creases of her face shadowed in the candlelight. "I could ask you the same thing, young man." Her eyes dropped to the gun briefly. "Guns are dangerous, you know."

"It's dangerous to be up here. Really, what are you doing?"

Mrs. Svitski held up the candle, standing on her toes to look past Sam's shoulder into the room. "There's a presence here," she said simply.

Keith snorted, shaking the flashlights as they flickered back on. "Yeah, we kind of figured that out."

Sam reached into his pocket, pulled out the EMF meter, and switched it on. There was a brief, aborted squeal, but the signal was nowhere near as strong as it had been a few minutes before.

"The question is," he said, turning it off again and looking down at Mrs. Svitski, "how do _you_ know that?"

"Oh, I've been coming here for years," Mrs. Svitski replied, waving her free hand. She took a step forward, still trying to look past Sam, but he didn't move out of her way. "Usually I stay in the next room over, because my research has shown that this room is the center of activity."

"Your research? What kind of--" Sam tilted his head to one side, suddenly remembering where he had seen her name before. "You wrote that book. The one about haunted hotels in Colorado."

Mrs. Svitski's expression brightened. "You've read it?"

"I read the part about this hotel."

"Well, that's more than my ex-husband read. What did you think?" Mrs. Svitski asked, her expression shrewd.

He thought of the photocopied pages downstairs, a few paragraphs of descriptions of chilling but vague encounters but very little real information.

"I think you know more about it than what you published," he said, hoping it was true.

She laughed. "I might. But I want to hear what _you_ know about it."

Sam considered her for a moment, then shrugged. "Okay. Might as well combine what we know. But I think we should take this downstairs, into a safer--"

"Um...Sam?" Keith's voice was low and frightened.

Sam turned and felt a cold breeze on his face at once. Mrs. Svitski's candle flickered, and the open door groaned on its hinges.

"There's something..." Keith was standing stock-still, his shoulders tense and hunched. "Is there...behind me?"

There was nothing behind him except empty air, but Sam asked, "What do you feel?"

"Cold fingers..." Keith blinked, then straightened his shoulders. "It's...gone now. Was there...?"

"I didn't see anything." Sam glanced at Mrs. Svitski, who shook her head. They all stood still for several moments. The cool breeze died as quickly as it had risen, and the candle flame burned steadily. Sam studied Keith carefully. "You okay?"

"I...yeah. Maybe we should...go downstairs now?"

"Yeah. You sure you're okay?"

Keith frowned. "Yeah. I mean...it just touched me. It _touched_ me."

"That's all?"

Keith gaped at him. "That's not enough?"

Sam hesitated. Both flashlights that Keith held were glowing steadily, and the temperature in the room had returned to its normal night chill. "No reason. Just making sure. Yeah, we should get out of here. Just let me..." He turned back to the trunk and crouched in front of it, tucking his gun into his pocket and bring out of the tools to pick the lock again.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Keith asked.

"I think there's stuff in here we need to look at," Sam said.

The lock opened without trouble, and he lifted the lid, then glanced up at Keith, who leaned down to hold it open. Sam grabbed several things from the top of the messy pile: the book full of drawings, another book that looked like it might a journal, a stack of sketches, and a pile of letters tied up with white string. He stood up, tucking the items under his arm, and Keith let the lid drop back down.

Sam took one of the flashlights back from Keith and nodded at him. "Okay. Let's go." He waited for Keith to leave the room, then followed and shut the door behind him, not bothering to lock it. He had a feeling that if he came back up in the morning it would be bolted again, anyway.

He gestured for Keith to go first, back down the hallway toward the stairs. Keith gave him a strange look, and a shiver of worry passed through Sam. He nodded for Mrs. Svitski to follow, then adjusted the papers and books under his arm and drew his gun again. They made their way down the corridor, three sets of creaking footsteps and three small lights, the heavy shadows and angular shapes in open doorways and cluttered rooms on either side.

None of them spoke until they had started down the stairs. A few steps down, Keith stopped abruptly.

His heart racing suddenly, Sam raised the gun. "Keith?"

Keith looked up at him, saw the gun, and a flicker of confusion passed over his face. "Sam, what are you..."

"Why'd you stop?"

"Do you hear that?"

Sam listened, watching Keith carefully over the top of Mrs. Svitski's head, and he did hear it: piano music, distant but unmistakable.

"Yeah," he breathed. "It's--"

Mrs. Svitski looked up at Sam and said, "I hear it."

Then she reached out for Keith's shoulder with both hands and pushed.

Keith's eyes went wide with shock and his arms flailed out as he tumbled down the steps. He let out a pained shout and his flashlight blinked off.

Sam reacted immediately, shoving by Mrs. Svitski and bounding down to the bottom of the steps. Even as he did so, he felt a blast of cold air, strong enough to blow the candle out, and a brief, soft, freezing touch on his face.

"Keith?" Sam cast his flashlight over Keith, crumpled against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. "Keith? You okay?"

"What the _fuck_ was that?"

Sam took that to mean Keith was still conscious, and he spun around, pointing the gun and the flashlight up at Mrs. Svitski. She was still standing about three-quarters of the way up the staircase, both hands clamped over her mouth, her eyes wide. She had dropped the candle and was shaking visibly.

"Mrs. Svitski..." he began cautiously, taking one step up.

"Oh, dear," she whispered, lowering her trembling hands. She leaned to the side, looking past Sam at Keith. "Are you quite alright?"

"Alright? You _pushed_ me, you--"

"Mrs. Svitski," Sam interrupted. He waited for her to look at him. Her eyes were unfocused, and she shook her head slightly, as though trying to clear her thoughts. He took another step up then stopped, bracing himself and aiming the gun directly at her. "Why did you do that?"

"I...I did that? Oh, dear. I didn't -- that was very clumsy of me."

"Is she--" Keith began.

"Yeah." Sam went back down to the bottom of the stairs and handed the flashlight and stack of books and papers to Keith. "Hold this for a sec." He took the EMF meter out of his pocket and switched it on, then went back up to Mrs. Svitski. He waved it in front of her, back and forth and up and down, while she watched with a bewildered expression. There was no signal. "But not anymore. Mrs. Svitski, what the hell just happened?"

"I don't...I'm not sure," she said. "I think...I don't know. What are you doing?"

Sam nodded slowly. "Right. Okay, look, let's get--"

Mrs. Svitski shook herself suddenly, then went down the stairs, pushing by Sam. "I'm very sorry," she said to Keith. "But it's...I think I need to..." Her voice trailed off. She walked over to the first room in the hallway, fumbled in her pocket for a key, and opened the door.

"Wait." Sam hurried after her. "Mrs. Svitski, it's not safe for you--"

"We'll talk in the morning," she said, and she shut the door in his face.

Sam heard the deadbolt clicked into place. He sighed and turned back to Keith, leaning down to give him a hand up. "You okay? Anything hurt?"

"Fine. Just hit my shoulder and..." Keith cringed, looking down at his foot. "Landed on my ankle, I think. So much for hiking out. What the fuck was that?"

"Probably the same thing that's been messing with Myra's head," Sam said. At least he hoped it was; more than one spirit in the habit of hopping into people's minds wasn't a possibility he wanted to contemplate. "It's gone now."

"Are you sure? Then why did she..." Keith waved his hand at the closed door.

"Freaked out?" Sam guessed. "I don't know. But whatever it is, it's gone now." He didn't know why he was so certain of it, except that the EMF meter was silent and the flashlight steady. The air was still cold, but it held none of the bitter chill that seemed to follow this thing around.

He took the papers and books back from Keith but didn't pocket the gun, and he was about to suggest they return to the yellow room when he heard the piano again.

It was louder, clearer now that they were on the same floor, and Sam could make out the music. It was the same song the young man -- the ghost, he corrected himself -- had played earlier, "As Time Goes By," but it sounded wrong. Angry, too loud, the gentle melody mixed with clashing chords.

As he looked down toward the far end of the hall, Sam saw firelight glowing from the doorway to the piano room, bright and dancing.

Keith swallowed audibly. "I really, really don't want to go down there."

Sam really didn't want to, either, but he took a deep breath and forced himself to walk down the hallway. Keith followed him, limping slightly, but he didn't stop when they passed the yellow door. The music grew louder as they approached, louder and harsher, the song collapsing into a confused cacophony of notes.

Sam pressed himself against the wall, sliding closer to the doorway. He could see the fireplace at the end of the room; there was no fire on the hearth, though light danced within the room as though there was. He waved for Keith to stop and stepped into the doorway, sweeping the gun over the room as he rounded the corner.

The grand piano was open, its lid held high and music pouring out, but there was nobody on the bench or anywhere else in the room.

Sam stepped into the room. The firelight grew brighter, and that's when he saw the young man. In the red-gold reflection in the window, Sam could see him sitting on the piano bench, his shoulders hunched and his head bowed over the keyboard.

Sam took another step forward, looking at the reflection rather than the empty piano bench.

The man in the reflection shifted his weight, dropped his elbows to his side. His back was to the window; Sam could see only the back of his head as he looked up, across the room, and began to rise.

Then the music stopped abruptly. The piano slammed shut, lid crashing down and keyboard cover snapping into place, and the firelight vanished from the room in an instant, leaving only the fading ringing of the music in the darkness.


	9. Chapter 9

The fire was burning low and hot. There were candles on the nightstands and the table by the window, giving the room a warm glow. It wasn't very bright, but after the cold, relentless darkness of the rest of the hotel, Sam was grateful for it.

"This is the worst handwriting I've ever seen," Dean said, tossing aside the journal he had been paging through. "Even beats Dad's."

"It might be important," Sam insisted. "There was something in that trunk that one of these ghosts didn't want us to see."

"Well, maybe, but that notebook's just got drawings and lists of names and addresses." Dean drew his good leg up and rested his hands on his knee. "So, let me get this straight. Ghost number one is your friend the piano man, who you somehow managed to have an entire conversation with without realizing that he was dead. Nice move, by the way. Very professional."

Sam sighed and leaned against the wall by the fireplace. "Look, I told you--"

"Yeah, yeah, I heard you. Nothing suspicious about him." Dean looked uncomfortable and restless but wide awake, and Sam felt stupidly relieved to have him take charge again, if only for a little bit. "Ghost number two is the resident of room eight upstairs, who has cold fingers, likes slamming doors, and just might be Mrs. Alvarez's dear old brother. Same dude?"

Flexing the fingers of his right hand, Sam examined the scrapes and bruises that the lid of the trunk had left. He shook his head. "I don't think so. I don't know. I mean, if he was willing to talk to me earlier, why the invisible act upstairs?"

"You're using living person logic, Sam," Dean pointed out. "Ghosts don't think the same way."

"Still. I'm pretty sure they're not the same."

"Alrighty. Ghost number three," Dean went on, holding up three fingers. "Likes hijacking people's minds for dirty deeds and seems to have something against people being able to walk." He gestured at his own broken leg and at Keith sitting in one of the chairs by the window, absently rubbing his twisted ankle. "Also appears as a shadowy figure with glowing eyes and may or may not reside in that old cabin. Same as one of the others?"

"No," Sam replied with certainty. "That one's different."

Dean nodded. "Yeah. Different... and meaner."

"If it can jump into people's minds--"

"--we should let everyone know," Dean finished. "The little girl is one thing, because kids are always vulnerable. But the old lady? That's something to worry about."

"_That's_ something to worry about?" Ari asked, staring at Dean in disbelief. "And the rest of it isn't?"

"No, he's right," Sam said, "because that's probably not all it's done. It might have put Rick's truck out of commission or made Judy lie about calling the snow plows."

Sam pushed away from the wall and began pacing in from the fireplace. He wasn't looking forward to going out into the hotel again, knocking on doors to wake people up, saying, hey, there's a nasty mind-hopping spirit loose in the hotel, and I know it's three in the morning but do you mind if I come in and sprinkle some salt around?

"And maybe not just them," he added, stopping to look at Dean. "I've been thinking."

"Don't hurt yourself."

"Dean, seriously. When you were outside... you said you weren't really thinking clearly. You didn't even consider that the woman out in the parking lot might be a spirit."

Sam could see the shutters come down over Dean's face and the stubborn set of his shoulders. Dean replied, "You know, she might be ghost number four."

"Dean..."

"Sam, I _was_ thinking. Maybe I won't win any awards for self-preservation, but nothing was controlling my mind."

"Not controlling," Sam said quickly, "but maybe... influencing? Making you make bad decisions."

"Hey, I'm not the only one who had a nice friendly chat with a ghost and didn't realize it."

Sam rolled his eyes; he had a feeling he'd be hearing about that one for a good long while. "Look, I'm just saying, maybe we should consider the possibility that it isn't an all-or-nothing deal with this spirit. It could be able to control Myra because she's a little kid, and Mrs. Svitski for just a few seconds, and maybe with you..." Sam trailed off. _C'mon, Dean_, he thought, refusing to look away even though Dean was glaring daggers. _You know you might be vulnerable. You know that demon in Vegas fucked with you more than you're willing to admit._ But Dean said nothing, and after several seconds Sam took a deep breath and asked, "Have you ever heard of anything like that before?"

Dean's expression slowly shifted from stubborn to thoughtful. "It's possible. It makes sense, right? If the spirit is trying to accomplish something, it might need to... to deal with everyone differently."

"Trying to accomplish something?" Ari said, sitting forward in his chair by the window. "Like what?"

"That," Dean replied, pointing at Ari, "is the sixty-four thousand dollar question."

"We need more information," Sam said.

"What we need is to talk to Judy Alvarez," Dean corrected him. "She knows a hell of lot more than she's saying, especially if that's her brother upstairs."

"You really think there's something in his stuff?" Keith waved at the pile of things on the bed.

"I don't know. Maybe." Sam stepped over to the bed and picked up a few of the loose papers, flipped through one of the sketchbooks and dropped it back on the comforter. "It's not like anybody ever leaves nice, neat ghost records for us to find. The research is usually more--"

"Except..." Dean began.

When he didn't go on, Sam prodded, "Except what?"

Dean leaned over and picked up one of the sketchbooks. He paged through it, scanning the drawings and words, then looked up at Sam with a strange half-smile on his face. "Where's that list we made earlier, of the people we thought might have died here?"

"I... um..." Sam looked around for his jacket and found the notebook in its pocket. "Here. Why?"

Instead of answering, Dean held out a hand, still paging through the journal with the other one.

"Dean..."

"Except when they do." Dean tapped the journal, then shifted upward, wincing slightly, and slid the notebook until the two pages were side by side. "Check this out."

"What is it?" Sam shoved some of the papers aside and sat down on the bed.

"Same names. A few of them, anyway. Dr. Franklin Frankenbitter." Dean's lips quirked in a quick smile. "Funny name. I remembered it."

"Okay..." Sam squinted in the dim candlelight. The page was covered with Ethan Warrington's messy scrawl and contained a list of about twelve names, addresses, and dates. And, sure enough, about half of the names corresponded to the list they'd made earlier. "List of dead people in the journal?" Sam said, "That's... weird."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Maybe Ethan Warrington did some of our research for us."

"Maybe." Sam scanned down the list again. Most of the names were listed in pairs; if the years were death dates, it looked like two people had died at a time, each time.

"He grew up in a haunted house," Dean pointed out. "His parents called in an 'expert' to get rid of the ghosts. _Somebody_ was paying attention back then." Dean turned back a page in the journal; there were another few names written on it. "Here's the first one. Horace Baxter, 1881."

"Baxter? Like the cat?"

"Man, I knew that little fucker was--"

A loud thud shook the room, the sound of something heavy hitting one of the walls with tremendous force.

Sam got up off the bed, and Ari and Keith both jumped to their feet.

Keith looked toward the ceiling. "Is it upstairs?"

Another thud; the candles shook and a log settled in the fireplace.

Ari shook his head and pointed toward the door. "Hallway."

The windows rattled and the light fixtures clanked, glass on metal. Sam couldn't pinpoint the location of the sound; it seemed as though the entire hallway wall was being struck at once.

He grabbed his gun and a flashlight and dashed over to the door.

"Wait."

"Dean..."

"Sam, _wait_. You." Dean pointed a shotgun at Keith. "Take this and go with him."

Keith took the gun. "I've never fired a--"

"It's filled with rock salt. But try not to shoot anybody who's alive, anyway. And you--" Dean waved at Ari. "Take what's left of the salt. Sam, we have to get everybody up and..."

Sam nodded grimly. And either warn them or stop them, depending on just who was in the driver's seat.

He put his hand on the doorknob, turned and pulled, but the door didn't budge.

Another thump, and there was the distinct sound of glass breaking in the hallway.

"Sam--"

"Fuck!" He hit the door at the same moment the wall shook again, and he could feel the vibration through his hand and arm. He twisted the doorknob and leaned back, but still the door did not open.

"Sam!"

"What?" He spun around angrily. "There's something out there, Dean!"

"Yeah, I know." Dean was leaning forward, searching through the bag of weapons beside him on the bed. He pointed a shotgun at the door. "But you locked the door when you came in, genius. Deadbolt."

Sam opened his mouth, closed it, spun around again and unlocked the door. He put his hand on the doorknob, waiting for the walls to tremble again.

Several seconds passed without another impact. Sam opened the door.

He stood in the doorway, pressed against the wooden frame, gun in one hand and flashlight in the other. The hallway was dark and empty. None of the neighboring doors were open, and there was nobody in the shadows. He held his breath, waiting for another thump, but the walls remained still. The logs and beams of the building creaked, settling and relaxing, but there was no other sound.

Sam took a few steps away from the door, sweeping his light back and forth. The light from the yellow room illuminated a portion of the hallway, and his own shadow moved across the floor and wall. Sam glanced back; Keith was right behind him.

Then, the entire hallway shuddered. The walls shook, the ceiling groaned, and several feet away a glass sconce fell to the floor and shattered.

And just as quickly as it had begun, the trembling stopped.

In the silence, a locked clicked to Sam's right. Someone emerged from a door a couple of rooms down.

"What the hell is going on?" It was Julian, the chef, dressed in flannel pajamas and squinting in the glare of the flashlight. "What is that noise?"

Sam lowered his light so it wasn't shining directly in the man's face. "It's a ghost," he said simply. "Look, we have to--"

He heard the click of another lock, and the door behind him opened a few inches. Mrs. Morton peered out through the crack, holding a candle that that glowed on her wrinkled face and thick glasses.

"What is that awful racket?" she demanded, glaring up at Sam. "Is it the storm?"

"No, ma'am, it's--"

Sam saw her eyes widen with surprise, saw a flicker of a movement in the reflection in her glasses.

He dodged to the side but not fast enough. The heavy flashlight Julian swung down caught Sam's temple. He reeled to the side as white fireworks exploded behind his eyes. Jabbing the shotgun blindly towards Julian's belly, he heard a satisfying grunt of pain as it struck. Mrs. Morton was shouting something, but Sam couldn't make out the words. He stumbled back a few steps and regained his balance, bringing his arm up just in time to ward off another blow.

He raised the shotgun, then stopped. Julian was staring at him blankly; he looked down at the flashlight, then back at Sam, blinking in confusion.

"Damn it," Sam growled, turning in a rapid circle, ignoring the dizziness. He cast his glance over Mrs. Morton, who was staring open-mouthed, past Keith and Ari, both standing by the open door to the yellow room, and down the dark hallway.

He began to say more -- _where did it go?_ \-- but the words didn't form. A sharp, shocking cold washed over him, freezing his lungs and setting his skin on fire all at once. His vision dimmed and all he saw was a swirling darkness, like black snow in a black night. For several seconds he heard nothing but wind and whispers, mingled together, rising and falling, indistinguishable voices surrounding him and calling out as though from a great distance. He flung his arms out wildly, feeling for something, anything, trying to see the flashlight or the walls or even his own hands.

It faded abruptly. At once, his vision cleared and the cold vanished, creeping out of him like a receding frost.

Sam doubled over, coughing and wheezing. His chest and throat ached, and he was aware of somebody saying his name. The voice was distant, muffled at first, but it sharpened quickly.

"Sam? Sam? Are you okay?"

He looked up. Keith was pointing the shotgun at him shakily.

He began to answer, but the reply caught in his throat. After another cough cleared it, Sam was able to answer, his voice hoarse. "Where did it go? Did you see it?"

Keith and Ari both shook their heads, and when Sam looked back at Julian and Mrs. Morton, their expressions were equally confused.

"We didn't see anything," Ari said nervously. "Except for you..."

Julian stammered, "I didn't mean... I don't know why I hit you..."

"Ghost," Keith offered helpfully. To Sam, he said, his tone still guarded, "What did it do to you?"

"I think it -- it went through me," Sam said, rubbing his chest and trying not to shiver. He still felt the cold in his bones, and his head was starting to ache. He shook himself and continued, more certainly, "We have to wake everyone up and make the rooms safe." _If we even can_, he added silently. But he only repeated, "We have to wake everyone up. Mrs. Morton, get your husband. You." He pointed at Julian, then gestured down the hall. "Wake up the other staff... um, Nancy and Nicole. They're in those rooms, right?"

Julian nodded and took a few steps away, shaking his flashlight. Sam's head had apparently put it out for good so Julian ducked into his room for a candle.

Sam turned back to Ari and Keith; Ari was already knocking on Brooke and David's door and Keith was down at the Kaufman's. As Sam passed the yellow room Dean called out to him -- "Sam, what the fuck?" -- but he went by without pausing, calling a quick, "It's fine, just a sec--"

He hurried down to the two last rooms on the hallway. He chose Mrs. Svitski's door first, pounding and calling her name, then crossed the hall and did the same at Mr. Buck's.

After a few moments, the lock on Mr. Buck's door clicked and the door swung open. The old man raised a candle and looked at Sam, then looked pointedly at his watch and yawned. "You do realize it's three in the morning, don't you?"

"Listen, sorry to wake you, but--"

"Sam?"

He turned and shone his flashlight back down the hall. Keith was standing a few feet away from the Kaufman's room, pointing both the shotgun and the flashlight at the door.

"What is it?" Sam called.

"I think you should come here." Keith was obviously trying to keep his voice calm.

Sam started down the hall immediately. He spun around quickly and waved his flashlight first at Mr. Buck, then at Mrs. Svitski's door. "Wake up Mrs. Svitski. It's important," he said, then turned around without waiting for Mr. Buck to respond. When he reached the red door to the Kaufman's room, he asked Keith, "What is it?"

"Listen."

At first, he heard nothing. "Did you knock?" he asked quietly.

Keith nodded. "Yeah. I heard voices and thought they were awake, but..."

"Sam, what's going on?" That was Brooke; she and David were standing in their doorway, each holding a candle.

Sam waved for her to be quiet. There was no sound from within the room. Down the hall, another door opened and Sam heard Nancy speaking to Julian.

From behind the Kaufman's door there was the unmistakable sound of glass breaking.

Sam stepped forward quickly and knocked on the door. "Mrs. Kaufman? Mr. Kaufman? Are you awake?" He heard a man's voice, low but urgent, and pounded on the door again. "Mr. Kaufman, open the door!"

The voice, high and panicked now, rose into a strangled, wordless scream.

"Mr. Kaufman! Shit. _Shit_." Sam tried to doorknob. Locked.

He took a step back and raised his foot, breaking the red door open with one well-aimed kick. The frame splintered where the deadbolt broke the wood and the door burst inward. He saw a flash of firelight in the room, the color deep and red, and he felt a burst of cold air, then the door slammed shut.

The scream cut off abruptly, replaced by a long, low laugh, a woman's voice.

Sam stepped back again and threw himself against the door, shouldering it open. It felt like something very heavy was pushing back, but as soon as it was open enough he slipped into the room, snatching his foot away before it slammed shut again. He stumbled a few feet before he regained his balance.

Mrs. Kaufman was standing in the middle of the room.

Her white nightgown splattered with red, the same color as the furniture and wallpaper. The window behind her was broken; cold wind and snowflakes drifted through the openin and red curtains swayed in the wind. Mr. Kaufman was slumped, unmoving, against the headboard of the bed, his pale shirt and red pillow soaked with blood from a long, deep slash in his throat. The growing stain was a darker red, almost black in the scant light.

"Hello," Mrs. Kaufman said, smiling.

Her hands were at her sides, shards of glass gripped in her fists. Blood dripped between her fingers onto the hardwood floor.

Behind him, Sam heard somebody hit the door; it opened slightly and snapped shut.

Sam held up one hand cautiously. "Mrs. Kaufman--"

She leapt at him, both hands raised high. Sam reacted immediately, firing the shotgun and dodging to the side. She faltered and snarled but did not stop, and she was on him in a flash. He felt the pieces of glass catch on his arms, tearing the fabric of his shirt, felt stinging cuts and the slick warmth of the blood on her hands. He ignored the pain and swung the shotgun, slamming it into her head and knocking her away.

He was dimly aware of the door bursting open behind him and somebody else stumbling into the room, but his attention was focused on Mrs. Kaufman. She recovered quickly, scrambling back to her feet, but she didn't attack him again. She looked at Sam and past him, raised one arm and wiped it across her mouth, smearing blood along her chin and cheeks, absently brushing strands of dark hair away from her face. She was still holding the shards of glass in both hands, clutching them so tightly that her bloody fingers were trembling. Her face and bare arms were marred with tiny cuts from the rock salt that had hit her, and she was still smiling.

"Whoever you are--" Sam began.

Mrs. Kaufman laughed. She threw her head back, and the sound was full and alive and disconcertingly bright. Her eyes closed, laughter tumbling from her lips, she raised one hand.

"_No!_"

A moment too late Sam realized what she was doing. He jumped toward her, tried to pull her arm down, but his hands slipped across her bloody skin. She twisted free easily, far stronger than she should have been, danced away a few steps and laughed again before slashing the jagged shard of glass across her own neck.

Her laughter cut off mid-cackle, choked and gurgling, and she collapsed to the floor.

Sam fell to his knees beside her. Somebody screamed, and he felt a gust of cold that wasn't the storm swirling through the broken window. A dark shadow rose from Mrs. Kaufman's still body, rushing past him with blinding speed, twisting into the vague shape of a man.

He swung the shotgun up and fired. Another gun fired just behind him.

The shadow shuddered and flickered and _shattered_. It burst into a mass of smaller wisps that dropped to the floor, skittering and racing across the hardwood. They swarmed over Mrs. Kaufman and toward the bed, clambered up the side and engulfed her husband's body. Tugging at the limbs and clothes, dragging Mr. Kaufman's body to the floor with a dull thump and pulling Mrs. Kaufman toward the window.

Sam reached frantically for Mrs. Kaufman's body, grasping at her legs, but the icy shadows were too fast. They hauled both bodies through the broken window, smooth and quick. Sam released his grip as his arms were pulled over the jagged edge of the glass, and he fell to the floor, hissing with pain.

Panting for breath, Sam pushed himself to his hands and knees and looked over his shoulder. Keith was standing in front of the fireplace, shotgun still raised, his eyes darting around the room, and the others crowded in the doorway. Their eyes were wide and shocked, candles and flashlights creating an uneven circle of light in the hallway.

Sam rose to his feet slowly and leaned out of the broken window. Snowflakes pattered on his face and the cold smarted in his lungs. There was a fresh, trampled track leading toward the forest, but the bodies were already gone. Peering into the storm, he saw a flicker of movement at the edge of the woods, a man-shaped shadow and a flash of bright eyes, then it vanished.

Behind him, somebody whispered, "Oh, my god."

Sam turned slowly and stepped away from the window, clutching the fresh cuts on his arms. The red room was still and quiet. Snow spun lazily through the broken window, the fire crackled on the hearth, and nobody said anything more.


	10. Chapter 10

Voices rose and fell in the hallway, angry, panicked and confused since the screaming had stopped. It sounded like everybody was talking at once. Doors opened and shut, lights bobbed back and forth, and finally, just as Dean was steeling himself to crawl across the yellow room and find out what was going on, Sam stepped through the doorway.

"What the fuck is going on?" Dean demanded. For a moment he was nearly giddy with relief; Sam was upright and seemed to be intact, though there was blood on his shirt and hands. Dean sat forward impatiently, reminding himself for the tenth time in the last ten minutes that leaping out of bed wasn't a viable option. "What the hell happened?"

Sam took a few steps into the room then stopped, went back to the door and leaned out. He said a few words to somebody in the hallway -- "inside the salt, keep everybody safe" -- then shut the door, cutting off the frightened chatter outside. He leaned against the yellow door, his eyes closed.

"Sam?"

"The Kaufmans," Sam said. He opened his eyes but didn't look at Dean. "It killed the Kaufmans. It took over her body and killed both of them and then it... It _took_ the bodies, Dean. Dragged them through the window and into the forest. I tried to stop it -- when it was still in her, I mean -- but I wasn't -- _fuck_."

Sam pushed away from the door and picked up a candle. Dean watched him warily; he looked shaky, unsteady, and he was holding his arms close to his chest.

"Are you hurt?" Dean asked, his momentary relief fading quickly. "Is that blood _yours_?"

"No, I'm -- it's nothing. Just give me a minute."

Sam went into the bathroom, and a few seconds later Dean heard the sound of running water. With a sigh Dean sat back against the headboard. In the hallway people were still arguing. _Fucking idiots_. Dean glared at the elk above the fireplace. _Get back into your rooms and make our job easier._

Or Sam's job, really, since he was the only one doing anything useful. Dean was just a goddamned spectator who couldn't even see what was going on, just got to listen through walls without knowing who was shouting, who was screaming, who was firing the shots, just a useless lump of invalid sitting safe and sound in bed while everyone else was out there getting beat to hell, or worse.

"This sucks out loud," Dean said. He punched the mattress.

The elk was unimpressed.

"Yeah, easy for you to say," he went on. "You're already dead and stuffed."

Stubbornly, the elk refused to blink or look away.

Dean added, "I like venison."

"Who are you talking to?"

He turned his head quickly. Sam emerged from the bathroom. He had stripped his bloody shirt off and was awkwardly trying to both hold the candle and press a washcloth to his left forearm. The hair around his face was damp and there was a fresh bruise on his temple.

"You are hurt," Dean said accusingly. "What the fuck happened? Let me look at your arm."

"It's nothing," Sam replied. He went over to the table where the contents of their first aid kit were scattered.

"Does it need to be stitched up?"

"No. It's no big deal." Sam set the candle down, picked up a tube of antibiotic cream, gauze, and a roll of bandages.

"Do you need help?"

"No!" Sam snapped. "I just need... _fuck._" He fumbled the bandages and dropped them to the floor. "Stupid fucking--"

"Sam. Bring it here."

Dean moved toward the center of the bed, gritting his teeth as he tried to shift his broken leg. The pain was more or less constant now, a nasty ache that showed no sign of fading, but if he didn't move much he could almost ignore it. Almost.

Sam carried the supplies over to the bed. He glanced at the kicked-back covers and looked at Dean is disbelief. "You tried to get up, didn't you?"

"Don't be stupid. Of course not." It wasn't a lie, Dean decided. _Tried_ wasn't quite the right word for _moved six inches, nearly passed out from the pain, and decided maybe that wasn't such a good idea._

"You have a _broken leg_, Dean. With no cast. If you try to move it's only going to make it--"

"Oh, for Christ's sake, spare me the lecture. Besides, I'm going to have to get up eventually. What if I have to take a leak?" When Sam only glared at him, Dean patted the bed beside him. "Now sit the fuck down so we can make you stop bleeding all over the place."

"I'm not bleeding all over the place," Sam protested, but he sat obediently and held out his arm.

Dean removed the washcloth and examined the cuts by the light of Sam's candle. Sam was right; they didn't need stitching, but a few of them were still seeping blood. He unscrewed the lid on the antibiotic tube.

"You gonna tell me what happened?"

"It was glass," Sam said. "I checked for pieces and cleaned it out."

"Yeah, good, but I meant the whole story."

Sam was looking down at his arm, his jaw set and his hair falling over his eyes. "I told you. It took over Mrs. Kaufman's body." He paused, then gave a small shrug. "Okay. First, we started waking people up."

"Yeah, I heard that." Dean dabbed at the cuts gently and took the folded patch of gauze that Sam handed to him.

"It was in Julian, the chef." Sam reached up and touched the bruise on his temple. "He whacked me with a flashlight, then the spirit jumped out of him and... I don't really know what it did. Nobody saw anything, but it felt like it went _through_ me."

Dean's hands stilled. "Through you?"

"Yeah. I don't know."

"Did it try--"

"No." Sam shook his head, frowning thoughtfully. "I mean, it didn't feel like it tried to do anything. It was like being dumped in a frozen lake, except all the way through, then it was gone."

"And then?"

"I guess it went into the Kaufmans' room. We heard Mr. Kaufman scream."

Dean nodded as he cut the bandage with his knife and began tying it around Sam's arm. He had heard the scream all too clearly through the shared wall between the rooms.

"Something was holding the door shut but not very firmly, and I got in." Sam stopped, still looking down at his arm. "Mr. Kaufman was already dead. Mrs. Kaufman, she -- it -- broke the window and used the glass -- but she was still alive. It was still in her. And it... it _laughed_, right before it -- I tried to stop it, but I wasn't fast enough."

_Oh, god._ "Sam..."

"Dean, she was standing three feet away from me. She slashed her own fucking throat and I was standing right _there_, and I didn't even--"

"Sam." Dean pulled the bandage tight; Sam winced and looked up at him angrily. "Mrs. Kaufman did not kill herself," he said. "That goddamned spirit did, and that thing is fucking _fast_. I had the pleasure of being dragged through the snow by it, remember? It's faster than me, faster than you. You couldn't have done anything else."

Sam looked unconvinced, but he went on, "You weren't the only one it dragged. It took the Kaufmans' bodies. It was... it was weird, man. After Keith and I shot it, it -- it was like it split in a bunch of pieces, and they dragged the bodies outside. Into the woods, I guess."

"That's... freaky."

Sam's lips twitched into a tiny smile. "Yeah. No kidding. I've never seen anything like it before."

"Me neither," Dean admitted. "But it's repelled by salt, so it _is_ a spirit. It's just not a normal one."

"Great. I love the weirdo ones." Sam withdrew his arm and immediately began picking at the end of the bandage; Dean slapped his hand away. "So what do we do now?"

"Keep everyone safe," Dean said. He yawned and rubbed a hand over his face. "And talk to Mrs. Alvarez. We can't beat this fucker until we know who it is, and she's our best bet. I know she knows something she ain't saying."

"Yeah." Sam nodded, then titled his head to the side, listening. There were still voices in the corridor, but they were no longer raised and angry. "The Alvarezes heard the banging and the shots and came down. And I think Brooke decided to tell them that she's Pepper's sister."

"She decided to tell them _now_?"

"When else? Besides, she was pretty freaked out, not really thinking about when would be a good time. Everybody is kind of angry and scared." Sam stood up and shrugged. He carried the first aid supplies back to the table, then knelt down to search through one of their bags and pulled on a clean shirt. "The Alvarezes were looking a little skeptical about what happened. Maybe not so much now. I'll go get them."

He started toward the door, but Dean stopped him. "Sam, take this." He held out his shotgun. "Where are the others?"

Sam looked puzzled for a second, but he reached out and took the gun. "Keith still has one," he said, "and I must've dropped the other in the Kaufmans' room."

"Bring them back to reload."

"Yeah. Okay."

"And make sure everybody is in a salted room. The daughters, too. They shouldn't be upstairs by themselves. Everyone. Even if you have to knock 'em out and drag 'em."

"Yeah, I know."

"And--"

"Dean." Sam rolled eyes in exasperation and opened the door. "I _know_."

"Be careful," Dean finished.

Sam looked over his shoulder, surprised, like that wasn't what he was expecting. But he nodded slightly as he opened the door. He stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind him.

Dean exhaled, closed his eyes, and waited.

The hotel was quiet now. He could still hear the low murmur of voices through the door, but they sounded farther away. Maybe people had finally wised up and retreated into the protected rooms. But they couldn't stay in their rooms forever. Even if the snow plows made it through and the power came back on, the hotel was still in danger, and it would be until he figured out a way to beat that nasty shadowy son of a bitch. Hopefully before it hurt somebody else.

Dean opened his eyes again. The fire was low and the room was dim; he should have asked Sam to toss another log on before he went out. He shifted around on the bed, trying and failing to find a comfortable position, then finally gave up and fell back against the pillows, glaring at the elk above the fireplace.

"You probably think this is funny, don't you," he said.

The elk did not respond.

"Or maybe it's just karma. Some human shot you, chopped your head off and stuck you up on a wall, so you don't mind sitting back and watching while some freaky-ass ghost goes around cutting people up."

Closing his eyes again briefly, Dean tried not to think about the angry red cuts on Sam's arms and wondered, instead, just what time it was. Almost four, he guessed, which meant he'd been awake for nearly twenty-four hours. And that was after only a few hours of restless sleep. Several days of restless sleep, he admitted reluctantly. Not the best state of mind for figuring out how to waste an abnormal ghost, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. Dawn was on its way, but he wasn't sure that would make any difference to the spirits. From what he remembered, Brooke's sister had been killed during the day, and he was willing to bet that a few of Myra's little bouts of possession had occurred during daylight.

"Any ideas, pointy-head?" he asked the elk.

The elk had nothing to offer.

With a sigh, Dean reached toward the stack of papers Sam had brought down from room eight. Ethan Warrington's room, or at least where his junk and his ghost had gone to rest. Dean grabbed a pile of letters, untied the dirty white string around them, and began flipping through the stack, half his mind listening attentively for any sound outside the yellow room. If they had to go upstairs to get the girls, or if they had to make another room safe, it would take Sam a few minutes to get back. There was no sound except the quiet voices, probably from Brooke and David's room across the hall. Calm voices, nobody shouting or screaming. Nothing to worry about right this moment, though that sure as hell didn't mean much. Dean forced himself to concentrate on the letters.

All of them were addressed to Ethan Warrington, and all of them were from the same person, a man named Nathaniel Olivet. The postmarks spanned a period of about two years and originated from cities all over the country.

There were footsteps in the hallway. Dean looked up and set the letters aside, watching the yellow door expectantly. The knob turned, the door opened, and Sam came in, followed closely by Rick and Judy Alvarez. They stepped over the line of salt, Rick and Judy eyeing it suspiciously, and Sam shut the door behind them. He set a pair of shotguns on the foot of the bed.

"Everybody's safe for now?" Dean asked.

Sam nodded. "For now."

"Are you sure this salt will work?" Rick asked. "How can it do anything? It's just salt."

"Salt repels spirits," Sam said, the strain in his voice indicating that he'd explained this several times already, "and blessed salt makes a line that they can't cross. When it's in a ring around a room, the room is safe."

"But even so, we can't keep everybody in the rooms forever," Rick said, pacing in front of the fireplace. He looked haggard and exhausted, his gaze darting around the room as though he expected ghosts to materialize in every corner. "People have to eat. We'll have to -- well, if the plows come through, we'll have to dig out the parking lot."

"Judy doesn't remember calling the snow plows," Sam told Dean, "or telling Rick that she had."

"So we can assume nobody's on their way to rescue us any time soon."

Rick shook his head. "No, that's not true. They'll be here. It's a small town, and they know us well enough to know that if we're not in contact after a day or two that means our phones are out. And with a storm like this, they'll know we need help."

"Good to know," Dean said, not entirely convinced. "But until then--"

Rick interrupted him, "What the hell is happening here?"

"That's what we have to find out," Sam replied.

"I don't understand. Are you really some sort of... some sort of _ghostbusters_?"

Dean took in a deep breath, but Sam answered first, with that same infuriatingly patient tone. "Yes. That's one way of putting it. I know you probably don't believe me, but honestly, Mr. Alvarez, you really don't have a choice right now."

Rick nodded, then sat down in one of the chairs by the window. "So what now?"

"We need more information," Dean said. "We aren't the first _ghostbusters_ who've been here, are we?" He looked pointedly at Judy Alvarez.

She met his eyes for a moment, then her gaze dropped to the papers and drawings on the bed. "Where did you get this?" she demanded, stepping forward and picking up a few of the drawings. "These are -- these were in a locked room. How did you get in there?"

"Mrs. Alvarez--"

"How _dare_ you?" She began gathering up the papers frantically. "These aren't yours. What the hell have you been doing? You have no right--"

"Mrs. Alvarez," Sam interrupted, putting a hand on her arm. "They were your brother's, right?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" She jerked her arm away, but she hesitated and glanced up at Sam in question.

"I think you already know," Sam said quietly.

She looked down at one of the drawings, an ink sketch of a horse galloping in a broad meadow.

"Mrs. Alvarez? Your parents brought somebody here to get rid of the ghosts, didn't they?"

"I hardly remember anything," she said finally. "I was just a little kid."

"What do you remember?"

Judy nodded and began pacing in front of the fire. She crossed her arms over her chest, shivering slightly. "It was some woman. I think she was from Boulder. I only saw her for a few minutes. She had... herbs and incense and crystals. I don't know what she did. I guess it worked. Before she came, there used to be..."

"Be what?" Sam asked.

"We used to hear things. People coughing in empty rooms, footsteps, a cart or something rolling down the hallway. And a few times..." Judy paused, rubbing her upper arms. "I thought I saw somebody. There was a woman, an old woman in a nurse's uniform. She would come into my room while I slept. I thought it was just a dream. But after that woman came, those things stopped."

Sam asked, "Did your parents bring the woman here before or after your brother died?"

Judy sighed. "After. Definitely after."

"Room eight used to be his, didn't it?"

"It wasn't supposed to be. He had a regular room on the third floor, but for some reason he always stayed in that one, the one with the tiny little window." Judy laughed, a harsh, unpleasant sound. "It's so stupid. He was a lot older than me, and I was just an annoying brat, and he used to yell at me all the time for going into his room. Every time I go into that room, it's like he's still there, telling me to leave him alone."

Dean frowned. "You mean... his spirit?"

Judy shook her head, then shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know. It's not like the others. No noises. I never saw anything. It's just a feeling."

"What happened to him?" Sam asked.

Judy resumed her pacing. "Ethan was never the most... stable person. My parents never talked about it, and I was too young to understand, but I guess nowadays they would say he was depressed. Or bipolar? I have no idea. And living here -- we all heard things, like I said. Our parents made it clear that we weren't supposed to talk about it, but Ethan... well, I guess he just couldn't leave it alone. I think he became obsessed." She gestured at the papers and journals still strewn across the bed. "I was only eight when he died, but the last year or two he was alive, that's all I remember about him. Ethan drawing, Ethan writing in those books, collecting newspaper articles. He stole records from the county office, wrote to people who had been patients -- you know this place was a tuberculosis sanatorium before my parents turned it into a hotel?"

"Do you know what he was looking for?" Dean asked.

She shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe he wasn't looking for anything. He definitely never told me, and I doubt he told my parents. He probably told Nate, but--"

"Nate? That's--" Dean looked down at the letters on the bed. "Nathaniel Olivet?"

Judy looked down at the letters, her lips twisting in annoyance. "He was a friend of Ethan's," she explained. "He used to work here in the summers, doing whatever odd jobs he could find."

Sam glanced at Dean, then looked back at Judy. "Did he play the piano?"

Judy was silent for several moments before answering. "Yes."

"He did?" Rick sat up straight in his chair by the window. "But, we've heard -- Judy, are you saying--"

"You've heard piano music when nobody was supposed to be playing," Dean guessed.

"Yeah," Rick said, frowning. "Just recently, though. I always thought one of the girls left the radio on, but..."

Sam shook his head, smiling slightly. "Definitely not just the radio. He's still here. But that means... Judy, did Nate die here?"

She was looking into the fire, her back to them, and when she spoke it was so quiet Dean had to strain to hear. "Yes. They both did."

Sam asked, "What happened?"

"I don't know," she said. "My parents never talked about it, but people said... they said that Ethan went crazy or something and killed Nate, then killed himself. But it... the police never could make any sense of it. They thought they both died in that old cabin, but nobody found the bodies until weeks later, out in the woods."

Sam looked at Dean and nodded. "Just like the Kaufmans."

Dean picked up one of the old letters, ran his fingers along the edge of the envelope. "They weren't just friends, were they? Your brother and Nate."

Judy turned sharply and glared at him.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Mrs. Alvarez, it's not 1970 anymore."

"And it might be important," Sam added, "if it's part of a pattern."

She lifted her hands in exasperation. "I don't know. I have no idea. Maybe? All I know is that my parents, anytime I asked about Ethan, after he died, they told me that he had been sick. That was all they said. And they called that woman in to... to clean up the hotel, that was what they called it. And that was it."

"All of the haunting stopped after that?" Sam asked.

Judy hesitated. "I thought so. For a long time, it seemed like it. I thought it was gone, and my parents -- well, my parents would never admit otherwise. But after I came back from college, I realized that the staff and guests were talking about hearing things again. Nothing like it was before, but small things. I thought... I thought they were imagining it, letting the old stories get to them." She sighed. "I guess that's just what I wanted to believe."

"And in Ethan's room upstairs?" Sam said. "You said you had a feeling."

"It's just that," Judy replied. "A feeling."

"Did you go through his things?" Dean asked.

Judy looked amused for a moment. "I already told you. He didn't want me to. I haven't been in that room for ages. We just use it to store old junk. Listen," she said, looking first at Dean, then at Sam, "that's all I know. The ghosts -- or whatever they are -- went away after that woman came."

"Until recently," Sam said.

Judy and her husband exchanged glances. Judy answered, "I guess things have been happening, these last few months."

"Since you started the renovations upstairs and in the cabin?" Dean asked, though he already knew what the answer would be.

Rick nodded. "Yeah, about then. Is that -- does it matter?"

Sam explained, "It's possible that the woman who was here before managed to trap the ghosts, or make them go dormant for a while, and your renovations disturbed whatever she did and woke them up."

"What do we do about it?" Rick asked, genuinely concerned.

"We get rid of the spirits again," Dean told him, "this time for good."

Rick asked, "Do you -- do you have any idea what to do?"

Dean shrugged. "Maybe. We'll figure something out. Mrs. Alvarez, we have to look through this stuff of your brother's."

She nodded reluctantly, then said, "Fine. Whatever you have to do. But we have to get back to our daughters now, okay?" She nodded at Rick and started toward the door; Rick stood up and followed her. "We shouldn't leave them alone."

"Wait." Sam spoke just as the Alvarezes reached the door. He grabbed one of the journals and flipped through it. "Do you know who Horace Baxter was?"

Confused, Rick replied, "Yeah, of course. He was the first person to build on this land. One of the first settlers in the area, in fact."

Dean remembered the framed description he and Sam had seen in the cabin. "That old cabin was his?"

"Yeah. It's one of the oldest buildings area."

"Do you know anything else about him?" Sam asked.

Rick shook his head. "No, not that I can recall. He was a prospector, I think."

"Was he married?"

"I don't know. Why?"

Sam closed the journal, his finger making the page. "Might be important. We don't know yet. Make sure everyone stays safe, okay?"

After the Alvarezes left, Dean looked at Sam. "Okay, spill. What're you thinking?"

"I'm thinking," Sam began, opening the journal again, "that Horace Baxter might be our first ghost. Look what Ethan wrote here." He handed the book over; Dean took it and read the page quickly. "See? I don't know where he got the info from, but Ethan seems to think that this woman, Anna Barbour, died at the same time as Horace Baxter. And look at the others." Sam reached out to flip a page. "Almost all of them are in pairs, a man and a woman."

"Couples." Dean nodded thoughtfully. "Like the Kaufmans. And maybe like Ethan and his so-called 'friend.' Murder-suicides?"

"Maybe. Pepper doesn't fit the pattern, though. She was alone and it didn't take her body."

"No, she doesn't." Dean read over the names again. "Not all of these are in pairs, though. Maybe the ghost doesn't always finish the job. Just because he's dead doesn't mean he's thorough. Pepper _was_ part of a couple, after all. It's just the other half wasn't here when she was."

"He's here now," Sam pointed out, frowning.

"Yeah. That's probably not good."

With a huge sigh, Sam shoved the papers aside and flopped back on the bed. "None of this is good, Dean. Even if this Horace Baxter dude was the _first_ ghost, how does that help us? Even if somebody knows where he's buried, we can't very well dig him up under five feet of snow and in frozen ground. And how do we even know it would do anything? That thing -- that _shadow_ thing, it's not your usual spirit. There's something wrong about it."

"Yeah, I know," Dean agreed, as much as he hated to admit it. "We need to figure out what the fuck that thing is."

Sam picked up a few of Ethan's drawings and shuffled through them. "Maybe he knew something that we don't." He didn't sound very optimistic, though. "Or maybe--"

Dean heard the music at the same moment Sam bolted upright. A piano, distant but melodic, nothing like the furious crashing he had heard earlier.

"You hear that?" Sam whispered, climbing to his feet.

"Sam. Don't."

"Dean, we need to know more." Sam grabbed one of the shotguns, quickly began reloading it. "He talked to me earlier. Maybe he'll talk to me again."

"But he's not the only one out there," Dean said. "That thing--"

"I know, but we can't just sit here," Sam said.

"Some of us don't have a choice," Dean grumbled.

Sam ignored him. He pulled on a flannel shirt over his t-shirt and picked up a flashlight. "Everybody else should be safe in a room, so I'll be the only one out there. I'm just going to see if he wants to talk. I'll be right back."

Sam hurried over to the door and paused.

"Sam, wait--"

Holding up his hand for silence, Sam opened the door. The music grew louder; it was a bright, playful piece, clear and cheerful and echoing through the hallway.

Sam looked back quickly and repeated, his voice low, "I'll be right back."

He shut the door behind him without waiting for a reply.

"You better be," Dean muttered. He let his head fall back against the headboard. The elk stared down at him impassively. "_Fuck_."


	11. Chapter 11

There was a fire on the hearth in the piano room. Sam hesitated in the doorway. Orange and yellow light reflected on the tall windows and danced on the log walls, but the room was cold, much colder than the corridor.

The young man was sitting at the piano.

"Hello," he said. He looked up when Sam came in but didn't stop playing. Quick and lively music filled the room; it seemed to come from all around, not just from the open piano.

Sam lowered his gun. "Hi," he said. "Nate, right?"

The young man smiled, fingers still flying over the keys. "Depends on who's asking."

Sam took a few steps into the room, trying to figure out just what to say. _Hi, are you dead?_ Even knowing that Nate was a ghost, it was hard to tell; there was only the slightest air of strangeness around him, something not quite complete. _So, I hear there's an evil spirit hanging around here. Know anything about it?_

"You've been here for a long time, haven't you?" he finally decided, then immediately felt like an idiot. _Stupid question._ That little Haley Joel brat was right about one thing: most ghosts didn't know they were ghosts. "Working at the inn," he added lamely.

"From time to time," Nate said. "I'm not fond of the winters."

"Yeah, we're... we're stuck here because of the storm," Sam replied. He cautiously moved forward another couple of steps, around one of the sofas and closer to the piano.

"It's so easy to blame the weather." Nate stopped playing and turned on the piano bench, resting his hand on the keyboard. He had no reflection in the window behind him, Sam noticed, and the keys made no noise when he pressed them. But he was still smiling, wide and friendly. "Makes no difference, in the end, what season in is. It never changes." Nate nodded toward the fireplace.

Sam looked up at the painting on the chimney, then took a few steps closer to read the plaque beneath it. _Never Summer Range_. "We can't see the mountains through the snow," he told Nate, feeling oddly relieved about it. In the painting the peaks towered over the valley, jagged and imposing. "Ethan painted that, didn't--"

He turned back toward Nate, and his heart jumped into his throat. Nate was standing beside the piano now, leaning on it casually like he was in the drawing Sam had found upstairs. _Ghost_, Sam reminded himself sternly. _Try to keep that in mind._ But his mind felt muddled and sleepy, as though every thought was slipping out before he could grasp it.

Sam cleared his throat. "It is one of Ethan's paintings, isn't it?"

"He always called it a cage," Nate said, looking past Sam toward the painting. "Trees and flowers, rocks and sky, but a cage nonetheless."

"Is it..." Sam frowned, trying to concentrate. "Is something keeping you here?"

Nate turned his gaze to Sam and winked. "I might be inclined to stay for a while, if you ask nicely."

Sam shook his head, amused. "Why are you still here, at the inn, after all these years"

"With company as pleasant as this, why would I want to leave?"

"But there's something stopping you from leaving," Sam pressed, growing frustrated. The trouble with taking to a ghost was that he couldn't be sure whether Nate was actually answering his questions or simply echoing conversations from when he was alive.

"Isn't there always something?" Nate asked. "That's what we are, puppets dancing on strings."

"Are there others like you here?"

Nate laughed and raised an eyebrow. "That should hardly surprise you. This is an age of free love and liberation."

"I mean, others like you who have been here for a long time."

"Rats in a cage," Nate said, waving his hand airily. "A beautiful, wild cage."

"I don't understand."

"Waiting for the pied piper to lead us--" Nate broke off, and in an instant he was seated on the piano bench, his hands hovering above the keyboard. His smile vanished, and his expression became grim.

"What is it?" Sam glanced around nervously.

Nate began to play again. The music was different from before, loud and fast and shrill, and the high notes raised the hair on Sam's neck.

"Is something happening?" Sam asked.

"Can't you hear the piper now?" Nate asked, not looking up.

"Who? Who do you hear?"

Instead of answering, Nate only played louder. He looked less solid now, flickering and fading, his face darkening quickly. Sam backed away and raised his gun.

The fire flared up, a momentary, blinding light. Then it was gone. The hearth was dark, the piano bench empty, and the room silent.

Sam stepped into the hallway and switched on his flashlight. It blinked and immediately went out. He turned in a slow circle, peering into the darkness. There was no sound except for his own breathing, no light except for the scant gray through the windows in the piano room. He took a few steps into the lobby, but it was empty, and he turned back toward the rooms.

The shadow was standing before him.

Pale, bright eyes glowed in the darkness, and a bitter, painful cold surrounded him.

Sam swung the gun around and fired, but the shadow was faster. It slid to the side, slithering into a dozen separate wisps. Immediately reforming, it rushed toward him. He fired again as the cold hit him like a wall of ice water, filling his lungs and blinding his eyes. Sam doubled over, gasping and trying to back away.

Something, however, held him in place, and when he looked up, the hallway was crowded with people.

They were still and silent, pale eyes in pale faces watching him without blinking. Men and women, young and old, every face was blank and expressionless. Nate was there, quiet and unmoving, and he was looking directly at Sam with no sign of recognition. There was a man in a white jacket, a woman in a nurse's uniform, a young couple standing arm in arm, a man in a pin-striped suit, a woman in a long white dress clutching a rosary in her hands, and several others.

_So many._

Sam tried to raise the gun, a startled shout caught in his throat.

But he couldn't move.

_No. Not this._

His head turned down towards his hands, and he stared at the flashlight and the gun for a moment before tossing both of them away.

Then he looked up again, his head turning slowly, unable to stop it, scanning the crowd. His gaze rested on a young woman at the back of the group. She wore an old-fashioned dress and her hair was pinned up in elaborate curls; her long, elegant fingers were toying with a pendant on a chain around her neck. She alone among the ghosts did not have a vacant expression.

There was no mistaking the emotion on her face. She was angry.

He took a few steps forward.

_God no. Please. No._

And he felt himself begin to smile.

~

A few minutes after Sam left, the door to the yellow room opened again. Dean started, grabbing the gun on the bed beside him, then frowned in confusion when Melanie Alvarez came into the room.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he asked.

She glanced down at the line of salt as she stepped over it. "It's safe in here, isn't it?"

"You should be with your parents," Dean said.

"They think I'm with Nancy, and Nancy thinks I'm with them," Melanie replied. She leaned over the line of salt to shut the door. "But all they're doing is freaking out, and it's getting really annoying."

"Can't any of you people follow simple instructions?" Dean asked, glaring at the elk in exasperation. "It's not safe to be wandering around."

"I was only out for a second," Melanie retorted. "Besides, isn't your brother wandering around somewhere?"

"He's a professional."

"Professional _what_? Mom says you think you can get rid of the ghosts. She doesn't believe you." Melanie wandered over to the other side of the bed and picked up a few of the papers. "What's all this stuff?"

Dean rubbed a hand over his face and yawned. "You don't sound surprised that there are ghosts here."

"I've known _forever_," she replied, "but it's not like anyone ever believes me. Can you really make the ghosts go away?"

"Yeah," Dean said. "That's what we do."

"What a weird job." Melanie leaned down on the bed and began flipping through one of the old journals. "Are you like those guys on TV?'

"Something like that," Dean said. He considered, for a moment, telling the girl to go back to her parents, but he decided it wasn't worth the risk. So he asked instead, "What do you know about the ghosts?

"Nothing much," she said. "I've heard noises and felt cold spots and stuff. Everybody knows the old stories, and I read about it on the internet, so I know they're ghosts and not drafts or electrical problems. Mom just says I have an overactive imagination."

"How do you know there's more than one?"

"Well, duh," Melanie replied. "There's always more than one. I saw _The Shining._"

Dean grinned. "One of my favorite movies."

Melanie smiled slightly. "Mine too. At least, it used to be." Her smile vanished, and she looked back down at the journal she was paging through. A folded envelope fell out; she picked it up but didn't open it. "Do you think..."

"What?"

She glanced up at Dean and bit her lip nervously. "Did the ghost really kill Mr. and Mrs. Kaufman?"

"Yeah, it did." He looked at her carefully for a few moments and sighed. She looked pale and worried, and he could see that beneath the casual teenage bravado she was genuinely scared. He went on, making his voice as convincing as he could manage, "But we're going to stop it before it hurts anyone else. It's our job. We're pretty good at it."

Melanie nodded uncertainly, then made a face. "What are _you_ going to do? You can't even walk."

"Yeah, rub it in, why don't you." Dean gave an exaggerated sigh. "Anyway, I'm the brains in this operation. Sam's just the muscle."

Melanie cracked a tiny smile. "Yeah, I'll bet. I bet he doesn't -- hey, look at this."

She opened the tattered old envelope and spilled something out; it was necklace, a small tab of grey metal on a tarnished chain.

"It has initials on it," she said, examining it in the candlelight. "A.B. and H.B. It looks really old."

Dean held out his hand. "Let me see that."

As she started to pass it over, there was a gunshot in the corridor. Melanie jumped, dropping the necklace, and sprang back from the bed. "What was that?"

Moments later there was a second shot.

"It's Sam." Dean sat upright and grabbed one of the shotguns. He heard a door opening across the hall and the sound of anxious voices. "Shit."

"What's happening?" Melanie backed away from the bed slowly, her eyes on the gun in Dean's hands. "What's he shooting?"

"The ghost. Listen, Melanie--"

"You can't shoot a ghost!"

"Melanie. listen. Yes, you can." Dean waited until she looked up at him; her eyes were wide with fear. "I need you to do something for me, okay?"

"What?" she asked warily.

"Open the door."

"What?" Her voice rose to a frightened shriek. "I'm not going out there!"

"I'm not telling you to--"

In the hallway there was the sound of glass breaking, and the voices were rising in worry. Somebody -- Brooke, it sounded like -- said, "Sam, what're you doing?"

Dean's breath caught in his throat and his heart stopped for a moment.

"Melanie," he said, catching her gaze again. "Open the door. Don't step over the salt, just reach over and pull it open, then come back here."

"But--"

"Nothing's going to hurt you, I promise. I just have to know what's going on, okay?"

She swallowed audibly and started toward the door. There was a heavy thump on the wall, shaking the room. Melanie stopped and looked back at Dean, her expression pleading. He felt a pang of guilt -- she was just a kid, for crying out loud -- but ignored it.

"C'mon, Mel," he urged. "Just open the door and get back here. It can't get in here, but we need to know what's happening."

Melanie nodded. She wiped her palms on her sweatpants and glanced at Dean one more time. Then she darted forward and yanked the door open, jumping back quickly as though it had burned her.

~

Fighting it was like trying to wade upstream in an icy, raging river. Sam could feel his limbs, feel them moving as he flung the gun aside and strode down the corridor. He could feel himself reaching, grabbing the glass bulb from a wall sconce and smashing it into shards. The sharp edges cut into his fingers, but he couldn't force his hand to open.

The ghosts in the hallway let him pass, parting as he walked forward, sliding and flickering out of his way then falling into place behind him. They were trailing after him, crowding around, watching and waiting as though they didn't want to be too far away from him. None of them spoke except for the woman with the rosary; she was whispering quietly, a frantic prayer spoken so rapidly the words flowed together unintelligibly.

But he ignored most of them. He -- _it_, the thing in him, the thing he couldn't stop -- glanced at the young woman with the curls in her hair. The name _Anna_ skittered through his mind, quick and dark like a rat at the edge of a room, but he looked away from her and kept walking.

_Stop._

Every movement he tried to resist felt like he had frozen steel bars in place of bones, all of them being tugged and pulled by marionette strings.

_Don't._

Firelight shone through an open door ahead. Sam heard voices, somebody calling out to him, but the words were slurred and unclear, like he was underwater. He saw somebody silhouetted in the doorway, a dark figure with warm orange light at its back, but his eyes couldn't focus.

_Who--_ His throat tightened and his mouth wouldn't form the words. Another door opened, across the corridor from the first, and there were more people moving and talking and casting dark shadows on the floor. _Keith_, he thought, desperately trying to say something, anything, to regain control. _Brooke. Where's--_

Sam was struck by a sudden dizziness and his mind began to race, a storm of images and memories that he knew were not his: bloodstained hands, broken windows, torn clothing, all in vivid color. rough textures and warm stickiness on his fingers.

Somebody -- _Keith, stop, go back!_ \-- stepped forward, and Sam felt a sharp stab of anger. No, not him, that wasn't his emotion, it was the other thing's, the spirit's, but his blood raced and his skin crawled, and cold fury coursed through him. His mouth was moving--

_goddamned fucking bastard lying cheating sonofabitch_

\--and he couldn't stop the words, couldn't stop himself from taking three long steps forward--

_rip your goddamned lying tongue outta your mouth_

\--raising the broken chunk of glass and sweeping it down.

But Keith jumped back quickly, and when Sam tried to follow he slammed into a wall of fire. There was nothing there -- _salt_, a tiny thought of his own whispered, almost giddy with relief -- but it burned and the spirit inside him reeled--

_goddamned lying bitch don't you laugh at me_

\--spitting angry and shouting more furiously with every moment.

Even louder, though, was the incessant prayer of the woman with the rosary. She was no longer whispering but nearly screaming, her pale apparition standing just at his shoulder, fingers flashing as they counted through the beads.

Her voice was distant, echoing and hollow, and beneath it he could hear the others too. All around him, there were moving when he moved, flinching when he approached the line of salt, staring at him with blank white eyes, tugged and dragged along like a thousand tiny fishhooks embedded in his skin were connected to each one.

When he -- _it_ \-- looked, however, the praying woman wasn't looking at him.

He turned around slowly.

_What the hell are you doing out--_

But his own confusion was lost when the thing inside him recoiled, shrank back, fear and revulsion shuddering through him. It wavered for just a moment, and Sam felt its grip on him relinquish. It was reaching out, cautiously, tentatively, and he stumbled backward, acutely aware of the yellow door before him and the impenetrable line of salt at his back.

He gasped desperately, trying to speak, but the shadow slammed back into him, furious and ice-cold, and his half-formed words froze in his throat.

~

"Help me up."

"What?" Melanie gaped at Dean. "You can't--"

"Goddamnit, help me up!" he snapped. He pushed the covers back and grabbed both of the shotguns, shoving one into Melanie's hands as he swung his legs off the bed. Blinding, white-hot pain shot through his left side and he gasped shock. Gritting his teeth and cursing, he gave himself a few seconds until the worst had passed.

In the hallway, it sounded like everybody was shouting, voices raised louder and louder. Sam -- _not Sam_, he corrected himself, _just Sam's voice, Sam's body_ \-- was taunting and ridiculing, and somebody was trying to talk to him.

"Stay in the room!" Dean shouted, just in case they were stupid enough to try anything.

The others weren't armed -- they hadn't given the gun to Keith after reloading -- and even though he couldn't see all of what was happening, he was more than certain that anybody who stepped into the hallway with Sam -- _not Sam_ \-- would be in trouble.

Which meant there was no way in hell he would let anybody else deal with this.

"Come here." Dean waved Melanie closer, snapping his fingers to get her attention. "Hey, help me up."

She was pale and shaking, but she obeyed and moved quickly. Dean stood up on his good leg, leaning heavily on Melanie's shoulders and pausing for a moment while he got his balance. He took an experimental hop -- _holy fucking hell that hurts_ \-- then said, "Over to the door."

It wasn't far, but it took them too long, too fucking long, and every jolt sent fresh fireworks through his leg. Sam was still pacing in the hallway like a caged animal, spitting out a constant stream of curses and insults that would put any Tourette's sufferer to shame. Sam had dropped his gun, but he had a jagged piece of glass in one hand. Through the doorway directly across the hall, Dean could see the other guests waiting and watching, just over the line of salt.

When they saw him, Brooke's mouth fell open in surprise. "What are you doing?"

Sam whirled around at her words. "Shut the fuck up you stupid lying bitch!" He lunged toward them, and they jumped back.

"Stay where you are," Dean commanded, "and get the fireplace tools."

"The fireplace--" Ari began.

"They're iron," he explained quickly. "They won't do much, but they're better than nothing. Go!"

Ari looked confused, but he nodded and hurried away from the door. He returned a second later with the tools in hand. Poker, brush, stupid little shovel. _Right_, Dean thought, scowling. _Those will really help_.

Dean and Melanie stopped at the line of salt, and he considered his options. They were, he quickly realized, pretty damn limited.

The salt was laid down just far enough into the room to let the door swing freely without disturbing it. Dean let go of Melanie and grabbed onto the door for balance, holding the shotgun in his other hand.

"After I fire this twice, hand me that one," he told her, nodding at the other gun in her hands.

"What are you going to do?" she asked warily. She was staring at Sam through the doorway, her expression both terrified and fascinated.

He didn't answer. If he fired where he was, the recoil would knock him flat on his ass, and that was assuming he could even get a clean enough shot from here to do any good. It would be a lot easier if Sam would stop moving for a second, but that didn't look like it was about to happen. Dean thought about tossing the other gun to Keith, but with Sam between them there was a good chance he'd grab it first. The last thing they needed was to give the possessed guy more firepower. Dean needed to be closer, and he needed something besides a scrawny fifteen-year-old kid to brace him.

"Right." He looked down and took a deep breath. "If I screw up the salt, fix it back into a line."

Melanie's eyes widened. "What are you doing?"

"Something incredibly stupid."

Using the door to hold himself steady, Dean hauled himself over the line of salt and into the doorway. Gasping with pain, he leaned gratefully against the doorframe, bracing himself as best he could. Sam was standing right across from him, spitting insults at Keith, lunging forward toward the line of salt and snarling with frustration when it stopped him yet again.

"Get out of the doorway," Dean said, waving the gun impatiently at Keith and the others. They were directly in front of him, right in the line of fire, with only a wide hallway and one angry ghost in his little brother's body between them. Perfect.

Keith dodged to the side quickly, pulling Ari with him, but Brooke didn't move. She was holding the fireplace shovel up like a bat and watching Sam fearfully. "What are you--"

Before she could finish, Sam spun around. His face was contorted with anger, as he took a quick step toward Dean.

And he hesitated. His expression changed, and Dean felt something else, something in the air between them, searching and reaching, like icy fingers probing a wound.

There was a flicker of confusion on Sam's face, a slight narrowing of his eyes, and for a second his mouth moved, like he was going to speak.

Then his face twisted again, sneering, and he backed away from Dean, right into the other doorway.

"Goddamn lying bastard," he said, but his voice was lower now, no longer a shout, and it trembled with something that sounded almost like fear. "You lying fucking dog, goddamned sonofabitch--"

Dean raised the gun and took a deep breath. "Sorry, Sammy."

And he fired.

The blast threw Sam backwards through the doorway opposite; Brooke jumped out of the way with a startled shout. Sam fell across the line of salt, and his body convulsed and he screamed as the shadow was ripped out of him. The spirit spun upward in shuddering wisps, quickly reforming into the shape of a man.

Dean fired again, right into its center, and held his left hand out blindly; Melanie passed him the other gun. He was trembling with the effort of keeping himself upright, the doorframe digging into his back, but he fired twice more without hesitating.

The shadow flickered and broke apart, its glowing eyes faded, and it vanished.

~

Sam was aware of being dragged across the floor and manhandled into bed, but he didn't snap into full consciousness until somebody began poking at his chest. The stinging pain startled him awake, and he glared balefully at Ari, who was leaning over him with an expression of intense concentration.

"That hurts," he said, slapping Ari's hand away.

"That's because Dean, uh..."

"Shot me? Yeah, I remember."

Wincing, Sam pushed himself upright. Somebody had bandaged his hand, and he flexed his fingers briefly, feeling the twinge of the glass cuts as he did so. He was back in the yellow room. Keith and Brooke were standing by the fireplace, and Dean was sitting in one of the chairs by the window, his leg up on the other chair. The teenage girl, Melanie, was perched on the arm of the chair.

Sam tried to remember if he knew what the hell she was doing there, then shook his head to clear it and glared at Dean. Dean looked terrible, even worse than Sam felt, pale and drawn with a thin sheen of sweat on his skin, making even the smallest movements like they pained him.

"What the fuck were you thinking?" Sam demanded.

Keith said, "You were -- you were crazy, man, he had to--"

"No, not that." Sam waved his hand dismissively. "That's fine. But, Dean--"

"Fine?" Brooke stepped forward. She glanced at Dean nervously. "How is that fine? He _shot_ you, Sam. He--"

Sam spoke to Brooke, but he was still looking at Dean. "Brooke. I know. It's fine. It's... hell, it's practically a family tradition. But, Dean," Sam said, fixing his attention entirely on his brother, "what the _fuck_ were you thinking, going out there? You can't even walk! If that thing had--"

Dean finally snapped, "Well, it didn't."

Sam stared at him stubbornly for a few seconds, then sighed. "No, I guess not. It didn't seem to... Yeah, you're right. Whatever the hell you were thinking, thanks." Sam touched his chest gingerly and glanced down. A shotgun shell of rock salt could do a hell of a lot of damage at close range, but he felt strangely numb, detached from his body, every other feeling overwhelmed by the powerful relief that the spirit was gone. He forced a smile. "So we're even now, right?"

"Sure. Until the next time you get your brain taken over by a homicidal maniac." Dean wasn't smiling. He regarded Sam thoughtfully. "How much do you remember?"

The bone-deep, aching cold of the ghost had faded, but Sam felt as though it had been ripped out of him, leaving a raw, jagged edge where the spirit had been. His thoughts were still scattered, and he closed his eyes briefly, trying to concentrate. He remembered anger. Fury. Wanting to hurt somebody. _Anna._ Words flying from his mouth without control. Glass for cutting, for slashing, for bleeding. Knowing that he was going to do something terrible and not being able to stop it.

And that had only been five minutes. Sam looked at Dean. He didn't like the way Dean was watching him, like he was figuring out what Sam wasn't saying. Sam looked down at his bandaged hand, trying to remember if he had even felt the pain of the cuts.

"Sam?" Dean said.

Just five minutes.

Dean's unwillingness to talk about those five _days_ in Las Vegas suddenly made a lot more sense.

"Sorry," Sam said sincerely. "And, um..." He looked up at Keith. "Sorry. Really. I was shouting at you, right?"

"Kind of seemed like it," Keith agreed. "Was it after me?" He sounded scared, and he was still armed with an iron fireplace poker, but he didn't look surprised. He glanced at Sam quickly, then turned and looked at the open doorway. The door was open, and from the hallway he could hear people -- one of them was David -- talking in raised voices. Sam exhaled; of course his little escapade had everybody arguing and fighting again.

Sam nodded. "Yeah. I think so." To Dean, he said, "It's not very clear. I mean, I remember doing... whatever it was that thing was doing."

"Do you know who it is?" Dean asked.

"I'm not sure. I think it might be Horace Baxter."

"You sure? Why him?"

Sam sighed. "I don't know. He didn't exactly introduce himself. But there was this woman, one of the other ghosts--"

Dean stared at him. "What other ghosts?"

"The other -- didn't you see them? In the hallway?"

"You were the only one in the hallway," Brooke told him. The others nodded in agreement.

"Oh. That's funny."

"You saw somebody else?" Dean asked.

"I saw... I think I saw _all_ of them. I mean, after I talked to Nate--"

Dean raised his eyebrows. "So you did talk to him?"

"Oh. Yeah. I did." Sam frowned, thinking back to the conversation. "I don't know if he told me anything useful, though. But after he was gone, and the -- the shadow thing came, I saw a bunch of others in the hallway. It was weird, like they were afraid of it or... I don't know. They weren't doing anything, just following me -- it -- but there was this one, a woman. Somehow I knew her name was Anna."

"Anne Barbour?"

"I don't know. She was dressed about right for when she would have lived, but I don't know." Sam shook his head. "It didn't... it kind of felt like a dream, to be honest. An angry, painful dream. Like the more I fought it, the worse it was." His skin itched just to think about it, the way his own limbs had been out of his control, no matter how hard he tried. "And all those other ghosts," he went on, "just watching, it was really weird. Except for this one."

Except for the woman with the rosary, the one who had grown frantic the moment Dean had stepped -- _hopped_, the fucking idiot -- into the hallway. His memory was vague, murky, but he the one thing he could recall clearly was Dean across from him, leaning on the wall, raising the gun while the ghostly woman hissed her prayers. And fear. He remembered the fear.

"You didn't see anybody?" he asked Dean. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure. Why?"

"I don't know. One of them..." Sam's voice trailed off. He glanced at the others, then looked back at Dean. "Never mind," he said, hoping that Dean heard the _I'll explain later_ under his words. When Dean nodded slightly, Sam swung his legs off the bed and stood up. "Look, we still need a way to get rid of this thing. Or these things. It was weird, like the other ghosts were just waiting for it to act, but..." He shrugged and held his hands up in exasperation, and said to Dean, "I don't know how that helps. Any ideas?"

Dean shook his head slowly. "There must be something holding that thing here. Something that ties it to this place."

"What kind of something?" Melanie asked.

"Some significant object," Dean explained. "Usually we look for the person's body, or something that could be an extension of his body.

Sam added, "But this guy is buried god knows where under five feet of snow, so that doesn't help us much."

"And we don't even know if there's anything of his--" Dean stopped abruptly. "Well. There is the cabin."

"We can't burn the cabin down, Dean."

"Why not?"

"The cabin Pepper was staying in?" Brooke interrupted. "What do you mean, burn it down?"

Sam waved away her question. "It doesn't matter, because we can't even get out there in this snow. And I doubt that Horace's evil shadow would let us, anyway."

"Yeah, I guess not." Dean shrugged. "Damn it. There must be _something_ we can burn." He looked deflated for a second, but then Dean smiled at Melanie, who stared at him in confusion. "Maybe there is. Mel here might have something."

"I do?"

"Where's that necklace you found earlier?"

She stood up and walked over to the bed. "I left it... here it is." She brought it over and handed it to Dean.

Dean held it up, dangling the small gray pendant by its chain. "A.B. and H.B."

Sam stared at it in surprise. "Where did you find that? She was wearing that. The ghost, Anna, she was wearing that."

"It was in Ethan's stuff. You sure it's the same necklace?" Dean caught he pendant in his fingers. "What d'you think? Anna Barbour and Horace Baxter?"

"Could be." Sam nodded. "I looks like the same one. That's... I mean, it can't be a coincidence that Ethan would just happen to have the necklace of the first ghost's dead wife or girlfriend in his things. Let me see."

Dean handed the necklace over to Sam. "Well, yeah, actually, it _can_ be a coincidence. It might not mean anything, Sammy."

"Still, it's something," Sam insisted. He looked at the pendant closely. The initial were on one side, and looked like there had once been something stamped or carved into the other side. But the metal was soft and whatever impression had been there was faded. "It's the first thing we've found that connects to Horace Baxter."

"True. And it's made of lead."

Ari asked, "What does it matter what it's made of?"

Sam swung the pendant a few times then caught it in his palm. "It matters," he said, stepping over to the fireplace, "because lead melts at a relatively low temperature. If it was silver or gold, we'd be screwed."

Dean nodded. "Thank god for poor old prospectors giving their girls cheap gifts."

Brooke asked, "So you're going to melt it?"

Kneeling down on the hearth, Sam began to build up the fire. He had to lean over the line of salt to do it, and he felt an odd, residual tingle in his skin as he did so.

"Yes," he said. "We're going to melt it."

As the fire flared higher, Sam sat back on his heels, enjoying the feel of the heat on his face. He reached over for the iron poker and hooked the necklace over the end of it, then carefully jabbed it into the low, shimmering blue flames at the heart of the fire.

"What will that do?" Keith asked. "Is that the thing holding the spirit here?"

"I don't know," Sam said. The pendant was already softening, the letters on it fading. "I guess we'll--"

The walls of the room shuddered, and the windows rattled in their panes. In front of Sam, logs settled in the fire, sending up a shower of sparks. He scrambled to his feet and backed up a few steps.

"Again?" Ari muttered.

There was another thump, even stronger, and the candles in the room flickered.

"Well," Dean said. "That's something."


	12. Chapter 12

The door slammed shut. Sam spun to face it, iron poker in hand, and took a few steps forward as the walls shook. He heard the door across the hall slam and the sound of David's pounding and shouting. The ceiling creaked and groaned, and in the fireplace the flames leapt higher, crackling and sparking.

"What's happening?" Melanie asked, her voice trembling with fear.

"I think we pissed it off," Dean said.

"No shit, Sherlock." Sam reached out cautiously and tried to open the door, but it held fast. He could hear frightened voices on the other side. He leaned close to the door and called, "Hey, David?"

The muffled reply came immediately. "Sam? What the hell is going on?"

"Is everyone in a room?"

A brief pause, then: "Yeah, we think so. We didn't see anybody else out."

"Okay. Just make sure it stays that way. Even if you can open the door again, don't go out."

There was brief, anxious laughter. "Yeah, we figured as much."

The walls stopped shaking and the fire calmed down, but the door still did not open, and after a few moments Sam gave up. Nobody said anything. They glanced around nervously, holding their breath, waiting. The logs of the building settled with quiet noises, and Sam could hear the low hum of voices from the room across the hall, but there were no other sounds. The candles on the tables were burning low, and through the window the night looked more gray than black, calm and still.

Calm and still. Sam blinked several times, rubbing his tired eyes. "It stopped snowing," he said, breaking the long silence.

They all turned to look.

"Finally," Ari muttered.

"It's getting light, too," Keith added.

Brooke turned back to Sam and asked, "What now? Is it gone?"

Sam reached out and tried the door again. "No," he said. "It's still here. And, yes," he added, looking over his shoulder at Dean, "the deadbolt is unlocked. It's holding the door shut."

"Why?" Melanie asked. "What's it doing? Is it keeping us prisoner? What do we--"

"Hey," Dean interrupted her. "Calm down. It's just throwing a hissy fit, that's all. Ghosts are temperamental bitches."

"But she's right," Brooke said. "What _do_ we do, if we can't get out?"

"Wait," Sam replied. "I don't think this ghost is happy sitting still for long."

"And reload," Dean said. "Mel, give me a hand. Bring those guns over here, and that bag on the floor." When she only stared at him, Dean smiled slightly and added, "Please?"

After a second's pause, Melanie pushed away from the arm of the chair and went over to the bed to get the shotguns. "I can't believe you shoot ghosts," she said, rolling her eyes. "They're already _dead_, you know."

"No, really? Damn, you know everything." Dean took the guns from her and began to reload them, his hands going through the motions automatically. He looked up at Sam and said, "So, that didn't work."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious." Sam stepped away from the door and began to pace in front of the fireplace, tossing the iron poker from one hand to another. "Guess we're back to square one."

"Not quite. We did learn something from your little adventure."

"Yeah." Sam laughed shortly. "This place is a frickin' Holiday Inn for the dearly departed. Those ghosts I saw must all be people the original spirit killed. It's the only thing that makes sense."

"All of them?" Brooke asked, her voice low and uncertain.

Sam looked at her a moment before he understood what she was asking. He shook his head. "I don't know," he said gently. "I didn't see Pepper. Or the Kaufmans, for that matter. I wish we knew how this place works."

"We just need to figure out what rules it's playing by," Dean said. "It could be that--"

Without warning, the door burst open with such force it banged into the wall.

Sam spun to face it. Across the hallway the other door was open, and David was gaping back at him.

There was a flicker of motion in the hallway between the doors, and cold air rushed into the room, snuffing out several of the candles. Sam moved forward cautiously, holding the iron poker at his shoulder. He stopped at the line of salt.

The air shimmered again, so quickly he nearly missed it.

David whispered, "Did you see that?"

Sam nodded.

A woman appeared in the hallway, her back to him. Sam saw David's eyes widen and his mouth fall open in surprise. He raised the poker higher, ready to swing as she turned around.

When she was facing him, Sam let the poker drop to his side. "Anna," he said.

She nodded slowly. Dark ringlets of hair bobbed with the motion, and Sam could swear he heard her dress rustle. She was pale and gaunt, with dark circles under her eyes, and she seemed stifled the high-necked, long-sleeved dress. The lead pendant still hung around her neck, dull and gray against the brown cloth and pearl buttons. She raised her hand to touch it, laying her fingers flat against her chest. The air was growing colder, as though she was drawing all the warmth out of the room, and for several moments she did nothing, said nothing, only stared.

"What... what does she want?" David asked finally.

Sam took a deep breath. Couldn't hurt to ask. "Anna? What do you want?"

She opened her mouth to speak but the sound that emerged was too faint, no more than a rasp of breath.

"I don't understand."

She tried again, mouthing a single word.

"Help?" Sam guessed, a tremor of expectation running through him. "You want help?"

She nodded. Slowly, very slowly, her hand crept up toward her throat; she pressed her fingers to the base of her neck. Blood seeped between them, running in rivulets over her white hand, and she spoke again, "_Help._"

"Why?" Sam asked, forcing his voice to stay calm. "Why do you need help?"

Instead of answering, she turned her head, looking first to one side then the other, up and down the hallway. Sam hesitated, then stepped over the line of salt. He heard Dean hiss, "_Sam, don't_," but ignored him and leaned out of the doorway to see what Anna saw.

There were others in the hallway. They were unsteady, flickering and fading like reels of film flashing by, but he recognized several of them. He saw Nate for a brief moment, and the woman with the rosary. An old man with a cane appeared, coughed loudly, then vanished again, sliding into the wall as though something was pulling him from behind.

Then a shadow whispered through the hallway, wrapping around each momentary apparition, and they all disappeared. On their faces Sam saw brief looks of resignation, sorrow, pleading, just before they were yanked away. All except for Anna.

He stepped back over the line of salt quickly and raised the iron poker.

"You're trapped," he said, and there was no question in his voice. "He's trapped you all here."

"_Help,_" Anna said again. When she spoke, the blood from her throat flowed more freely, and a dark stain spread across the front of her dress.

"How?"

But she wasn't looking at him. She was staring past him, into the room, and even without turning he knew who she was looking at.

"_Help_."

Sam glanced over his shoulder. Dean was looking back at Anna, his expression unreadable.

"How?" Sam asked again, more urgently. "We don't know what to do."

For a long moment he thought she wasn't going to answer. Then she drew her gaze away from Dean and met Sam's eyes steadily.

"_We do_," she said.

And then she was gone.

Sam leaned out cautiously, looking from side to side, and in the other doorway David did the same. The hallway was empty. He turned around and looked at the others.

Melanie frowned at Dean. "Why was she talking to _you_?"

Dean looked down at the gun in his hands. "How should I know?" he said gruffly.

"Dean--" Sam began.

"Well, I don't," Dean insisted, not looking up. "You heard her. She didn't exactly explain herself. What did you mean, anyway, that they're trapped here?"

Hesitantly, Sam said, "It was just -- look, I think there's something about you--"

"Don't be stupid," Dean snapped. "You're the one with the connection to the psychic friends network and the big flashing paranormal light on your head."

"Dean. That spirit was in me, remember? And when you showed up in the hallway, I definitely felt like there was something. Maybe it was--"

Dean did look up then, and Sam stopped short.

"Something what?" Brooke pressed when he didn't go on.

Sam bit his lip and looked around. Melanie was looking at Dean like she was waiting for him to come up with all the answers, and Brooke, Keith, and Ari were all looking at Sam, impatient and curious.

And Dean was looking at him like he'd give anything in the world to keep Sam from finishing the sentence.

_Shit._ Sam sighed and tapped the iron poker into his open hand thoughtfully. This would be hard enough without the damn audience.

"Look," he said, thinking quickly, "that ghost was obviously interested in Dean, which means that we -- that you guys should go back into the other room. If the ghosts -- if they're focused on this room, it'll be safer if you're not here."

"Sam, what are you talking about?" Brooke asked. "Isn't this room safe?"

"Yes. Probably. It's just--" He walked over to the doorway and checked the hallway again; it was still empty, and he felt none of the bone-chilling cold to suggest that the shadow spirit was around. "I think I know what's going on here, and I really think it's better if you guys go back into the other room." He looked back at them with his most sincere expression. "Just trust me on this, okay?"

It took a bit more convincing. Melanie only left after Dean told Sam to give her the fireplace poker, and Brooke kept looking at Sam like she was on the verge of refusing to do anything until he explained. But eventually all four of them left, darting across the hallway quickly and without incident. Sam told them to shut the door and stay put, then he closed the door of the yellow room and walked over to the bed.

"Sam, what the fuck is this all about?" Dean asked tiredly. He rested the shotgun across his good leg and looked up at Sam. "You had better damn well have some idea what's going on and not just be clearing the room to say what I think you're going to say."

"Both, actually," Sam admitted. "When that thing was in me--"

"Real reliable point of view there."

"Dean, that spirit, Horace Baxter or whatever he's become, it's... it's almost like it's scared of you."

Dean snorted with disbelief. "Right, sure. Didn't stop it from whacking me on the head and dragging me through the snow."

"But it didn't possess you," Sam pointed out. "Don't you wonder why?"

"No."

Sam sighed. "Dean. Come on. Maybe it's not just fear. When you stepped out into the hallway, it was also... I don't know. It was fascinated, like you weren't what the spirit expected. At all. You distracted it. It was so focused on you it almost lost hold of me for a second. And it wasn't just the shadow thing. One of the other ghosts, this woman, she was praying -- look, I know it sounds crazy, but it was because of _you_. Anna was looking at you. And..." Sam paused. He sat down on the edge of the bed, met Dean's stubborn glare. "And there's only one thing I can think of that happened to you and nobody else here -- something ghosts would notice."

"Goddamnit, Sam, it's _gone_!" Dean said, hitting the arm of the chair with his fist. "The fucking demon is _gone_ and you fucking know it is because if it wasn't you would've been dead days ago and the kids here would be--" He broke off suddenly, looking away from Sam and out the window, his jaw set and his eyes narrow.

"I know it is," Sam said quietly. "But what if there's some residual effect? Something that spirits can sense?"

"It didn't do anything to me. That isn't how it w--"

"Dean. Yes, it did. I can tell, okay? It messed with you big-time--"

"Sam. Shut up."

"--and it's kind of obvious. You've been zoning out, you're skittish around people -- when the fuck are you ever nervous around people, Dean? Since when do _girls_ freak you out? And what about what you said after you went upstairs the other night, and when we were out in the cabin? Hunting ghosts by how they feel? I don't know what the hell it is, but the ghosts _do_ notice it. Maybe it's--" Sam threw up his hands, his mind racing for an explanation. "Maybe it's just like how a demon can leave a residue or a signature on an object or in a place, something that's strong right after it leaves but fades with time. Maybe that happens with people who are possessed, too."

There was a long silence, and Sam waited.

Still staring out the window, Dean finally asked, "Don't you think we would've heard about something like that before now?"

"Maybe. Maybe not," Sam replied. "Why would we? How often do we see somebody who's recently exorcised in close contact with a whole bunch of powerful spirits?"

"I don't know," Dean admitted. "Besides, even if you're right -- and I'm not saying you are -- we have a more pressing problem right now."

"Dean--"

"So, you think they're trapped?"

All right, then. Subject changed. "Yeah. It's the way the ghosts were acting, when I could see them. It was like they couldn't move unless old Horace was moving, like they were just waiting for him to do something." He sighed and leaned back on his hands. "Damn it, I wish we'd gotten EVP, heard what they have to say."

"Only about twelve hours late to be thinking of that, dude."

"Well, I've been busy."

"And you did _talk_ to one of them."

"Nate. Yeah. He said some weird stuff." Sam frowned, thinking back to the conversation. "These random things, about 'rats in a cage' and puppets on strings, and about the pied piper leading them away. Sounds to me like they don't really want to be here."

Dean scratched the back of his head, then looked at Sam sharply. "The rat king," he said.

"The... what?"

"Give me those drawings," he said, pointing to the paper scattered on the bed.

Sam gathered up the drawings and handed them over to Dean, who immediately began paging through them. "Why?"

"Jesus, Sam, don't you remember anything?"

"Might help if you tell me what I'm supposed to remember."

"That's cheating. Remember Miss Claudette Lynne Devereaux? Augusta, Georgia."

Sam blinked in surprise. "Barely. I was, what, eight?"

"Remember her housekeeper?" Dean asked, still shuffling through the drawings. "Lilah. Best damn cornbread in the world, I swear. And she used to tell the freakiest stories, bad enough even Dad got a little twitchy, all about the 'unnatural creatures' out in the swamp."

"Dean, what the heck--"

Dean whipped a single page out of the stack and passed it to Sam. "The rat king."

It was Ethan Warrington's drawing of a huge mass of rats, tangled together, blank eyes and tiny claws, tails intertwined and bodies indistinguishable.

All at once, Sam did remember. He remembered sitting on the porch outside Lilah's kitchen on a stifling summer night, listening to Lilah's slow, deep Southern voice and the steady creak of her rocking chair. And he remembered going to bed in one of the plantation outbuildings, unable to sleep because every tap he heard, every scritch or scratch, he was certain it was a huge, hungry, scrambling tangle of rats gnawing its way out from underneath the floorboards.

"Okay," Sam said slowly. "So Ethan Warrington drew a rat king. What does that -- oh. Huh."

Dean smiled. "Yeah. Looks like old Ethan knew what was going on after all."

"You think that's how it works?" Sam asked. "It started with one ghost -- or two, if Horace and Anna died at the same time--"

"--and he grabs the others when they form," Dean continued. "They're still individuals, but they're all mixed together in one big jumble. That's what the shadow is; that's why it could break apart like you said it did. Horace Baxter started it, and he controls them."

"The control isn't complete, though," Sam said. "Otherwise, it would be the shadow-thing all the time, and we wouldn't see them as individuals. We wouldn't have run into Ethan upstairs, and I wouldn't have talked to Nate. And Anna -- she was practically begging for our help."

Dean considered it for a moment. "Well, maybe he can't control everyone the same. And maybe melting the necklace did something. Maybe Anna could ask us for help because we destroyed the thing that was binding her to Horace."

Sam thought about the other ghosts in the corridor, flashing into existence and being whipped away. "Could be," he agreed. "His control might be slipping. She did say that they knew what to do. But I don't get it -- if they can break free of him, why haven't they done it yet?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "It's never that simple. Just because some of them can chat with us doesn't mean..." His voice trailed off, and his expression grew thoughtful. "Do you remember--"

"Remember what?"

Dean made a face -- almost sheepish, if Sam didn't know better -- and said, "That, uh, Woman in White out in Jericho."

"Oh." Sam felt a twist in his gut, though it wasn't as sharp as it used to be. "Yeah."

"Well, think about it," Dean went on quickly. "Both she and her kids were haunting the area, but the kids couldn't get revenge on Mommy Dearest until some dipshit drove a car through the front of the house."

"It didn't even get a scratch," Sam said, rolling his eyes.

"It got _five_ scratches," Dean retorted, "and a busted headlight, but that's all water under a haunted bridge. The point is, all we had to do was put Mommy and the kids in the same time and place, and the kids took care of the rest. Maybe all these ghosts need is an opportunity."

Sam felt a shiver of worry. "I don't know, Dean. What kind of opportunity?"

"A trap. Salt can keep spirits in just as well as out."

"Even if that would work -- which it totally wouldn't -- how are we going to get shadow guy into the trap?"

Dean smiled crookedly. "Bait."

Sam stared at him. "No. No way. Are you out of your mind?"

"Hey, man, you're the one who said he was fascinated. Distracted. Whatever the fuck that demon did to me, let's use it to our advantage."

Sam stood up and threw the drawing down on the bed. "Are you out of your fucking _mind_? Did you forget that this fucking thing tried to kill you? Did you forget that you have a _broken leg_?"

"Ah, fuck," Dean snorted. "I thought it was just a cramp. Thanks for reminding me. Sam, look--"

"No, you look. No way. We are not putting you in the same room as that thing." Sam started pacing angrily, willing himself not to shout. He flexed his cut fingers and picked at the bandages. "It nearly killed you once already tonight. This is the dumbest--"

"It beat the crap out of me," Dean corrected. "If it really wanted to kill me, it would've just snapped my neck and been done with it."

Sam made an exasperated sound that was not, he was prepared to swear, anything like a squeak. "God, Dean. That's a _great_ way to look at it."

"You have any other brilliant ideas for trapping it?"

"How do we even know trapping it would work?"

"Okay, fine." Dean shrugged, tossing the stack of Ethan's drawings aside. "You have any other brilliant ideas at all? 'Cause I gotta say, Sammy, I'm not seeing many options here. We've got fifteen people stuck in this place. No one can even walk through the fucking halls without getting possessed or slashed up by a freak with a fetish for broken glass and--"

"I know," Sam said. "I know. We have to do something."

"And we have to do it soon."

Sam stepped over to the window and leaned against one of the logs between the panes. Dawn was still a while away, but it was getting lighter outside, and it looked like the storm was moving away. "Maybe it's not as powerful during the day," he said.

"You really believe that?"

"No," he sighed. "Okay. So, a trap?"

"A trap," Dean said. "How much salt do we have left?"

"Enough, I think," Sam said. "Not enough to do another room, but enough to rig something up in here. And then what? After it's stuck?"

"It'll give the others a chance to mutiny."

"They're ghosts, Dean, not pirates. What if they don't? What if Horace still has too much control?"

"Well, then, they're still trapped, and we've got time to figure something else out."

"I guess," Sam agreed reluctantly. "But no bait. Not you, not anybody."

"Oh, okay, we'll just ask old Mr. Baxter to step into the salt circle so his rats can tear him to pieces. He'll go for that for sure."

"Then I'll do it," Sam said. "I'll be the bait. I can get out of the circle after it's closed."

"What if he possesses you again? He didn't have any trouble last time."

Sam shrugged. "Then you'll have a possessed guy in a circle."

"Possessed by a spirit whose M.O. is to make people kill themselves."

"No weapons. No glass."

"No way. I'm doing it. From what we've seen, I'm more likely to draw the fucker in and less likely to get possessed. And I can get out."

Sam bumped his forehead against the window pane. "How? By _hopping_? You can't walk."

"Exactly. If something happens to you, I can't do shit. And if it does possess me, I won't be able to get far. Sam, we need a worm to reel this goddamned thing in, and you said yourself that I'm a tastier worm."

"I'm going to ignore that incredibly disturbing fishing metaphor." With a sigh, Sam sat down on the bed again. "This isn't going to work. This is the worst plan we've ever come up with."

"Nah," Dean said, shaking his head. "Bottom ten, maybe, but not the worst."

"What if it goes wrong? What if--"

"Hey, that's what I have you for."

~

Dean watched and waited while Sam laid down the trap and emptied it of everything except for a chair and a fireplace poker. The new line of salt enclosed a smaller portion of the yellow room, an oblong area without any glass or anything else that might be used as a weapon. He had taken the door off its hinges, and in the room across the hall they had done the same. It would only work, Dean knew, if Sam was fast enough to close the trap from the outside once the shadow was in, and there was no sense giving the ghost the opportunity to slam doors to get in his way.

Sam stepped back and examined his work critically.

"It's not exactly a circle," Dean said, struggling out of the other chair. Sam hurried over to help him up. "More of a shapeless blob." When Sam glared at him, he smiled. "I mean, it looks great, Sammy. Best ghost trap I've ever seen."

"Bite me."

"Except for those ones they used in _Ghostbusters_, the little boxes. Those were cool."

"Dean, I don't think--"

Dean sighed. "Leave it, Sam. This is what we're doing."

They'd already been over it about a dozen times, and this was still the best plan they had. Maybe with a few hours sleep and another day to figure things out they could come up with something better, but they didn't have the time. The ghosts had been pretty quiet since Anna had vanished, but that fact worried Dean more than reassured him. He had the feeling the ghosts were waiting for something, watching for a weakness. Even though that was exactly what he was planning on giving them, it made him uneasy.

Sam helped him into the not-quite-a-circle and pulled the chair over to the edge. Dean sat down on the arm, hoping that he would be able to get up and out of the circle fast enough if he had to. Sam handed him the fireplace poker then stepped back, watching Dean as if he expected him to topple over any second. Considering how exhausted he was and how much his body protested being upright, Dean had to admit it wasn't an unreasonable worry.

Dean waved the poker at the door. "Alright. Ready."

Hesitating, Sam began, "Are you--"

"_Yes._ For crying out loud, Sam, let's get this over with."

"I still think I should--"

Dean only glared at him, and Sam glared back, his jaw set stubbornly.

"Right. Okay." Sam turned away abruptly, the canister of salt in one hand and shotgun in the other. He stopped at the doorway of the yellow room and looked back at Dean. "Here goes nothing."

He scuffed at the salt with his shoe, breaking the circle, then tucked the shotgun under his arm and crouched down, using his hand to do a more thorough job of sweeping it away. Then he stood up and leaned into the hallway, looked to both sides, and hurried into the other room. He turned and looked back at Dean, and everyone else in the room was pressed close behind him.

With everyone watching through the two open doorways, Dean felt a little bit like an animal in a zoo. A zoo where somebody had let the tiger out of its cage and he was the dumb fuck charged with the duty of luring it back in.

Several minutes passed.

"Where is it?" Sam asked, leaning out into the hallway. "You don't think the fact that it's almost dawn--"

"It'll be here," Dean told him. He shifted on the arm of the chair, trying his best not to think about how much his leg hurt and what all this movement was doing to it. Taking in a deep breath, he looked toward the ceiling and shouted, "Hey, Horace! I'm waiting for you, you stupid shit!"

Even through the two doorways and across the hall, Dean could see Sam roll his eyes. "Somehow I don't think that taunting it is going to--"

A cold wind rushed through the doorway and the walls creaked.

"--do anything," Sam finished quietly. He started to lean into the hallway again.

"Sam, don't," Dean said. "Stay back. Don't move until it's in here."

The air grew colder, and it seemed like what little light there was in the room dimmed. The walls groaned as though they were under great pressure, and the windows began to rattle. In the hallway, there were footsteps: slow, heavy, measured.

"That's right," Dean muttered. "Get your freaky ass in here."

The shadow stepped into view between the two doorways. It moved strangely but steadily, as though its limbs were dragging something heavy behind them. It turned toward Sam and the others, lunging at them and stopping short when it encountered the line of salt.

Sam raised his gun, and Dean called sharply, "Don't. Wait."

The shadow surged toward Sam again; there were flares of faint red light in its limbs as it reached the salt.

Dean adjusted his grip on the poker and raised his voice: "Hey, you, in here."

Slowly, the shadow twisted around to face him. Its eyes glowed pale and bright in its featureless face.

Dean didn't look away. "That's right. Come on in."

The shadow moved forward slowly, inching across the hall and through the doorway of the yellow room. It hesitated as it passed where the line of salt had been, but it didn't stop, and it didn't take its eyes off Dean. He felt the same strange, uncomfortable _touch_ he had felt earlier, almost like the thing was poking at his mind, but he didn't move and he didn't react.

When it was in the center of the makeshift circle, Dean shouted, "Now!"

Sam darted across the hallway and dumped a line of salt across the doorway, closing the circle. The shadow whirled around and leapt at him, roaring with anger when it slammed into the wall of salt.

"Dean, get out of there!" Sam shouted. He had the shotgun raised and pointed at the shadow.

Dean pushed himself upright, leaning on the back of the chair, and raised the poker as the shadow spun around to face him again. It stopped short at the point of the iron, but it didn't back away. Dean felt the chair move under his hand and realized a second too late that he couldn't balance without it; the chair spun away and he stumbled, collapsing when he tried to put weight on his left leg. Something twisted him around and shoved him down to the floor, slamming the back of his head on the wood and knocking the breath out of him.

The shadow hovered over him, its face just a few inches from his. Bitter, painful cold surrounded him, stinging his throat as he gasped for breath.

But it wasn't just one face. It was a dozen faces, or more, layered on top of each other, eyes burning together.

Somewhere nearby, Sam was shouting. Dean caught his breath enough to say, "Wait. Don't -- just wait."

The shadow's expression was furious, but as he watched it shifted and slipped apart, blurring the features and pressing the boundaries of its form outward. He could still feel it pushing at his mind, hesitantly, uncertainly at first, but the touch grew more insistent and more painful, like cold spikes behind his eyes. Dean clenched his teeth and shut his eyes and tried to raise the poker, but something was pinning his arm to the floor.

He heard Sam shout -- in surprise this time -- and opened his eyes again.

Anna was standing over the shadow. Her hand was still pressed to her throat, and she was looking down at the shadow angrily. She stepped back and the shadow shuddered, gave a painful groan that sounded like the walls of the building settling, and suddenly there was an old man in a dressing gown beside her, leaning on a cane and staring at the shadow with a malevolence that matched Anna's. The shadow convulsed again, and another ghost appeared, a woman clutching a rosary and muttering to herself.

_It's working_, Dean thought wildly. _Holy fuck, it's working._

The shadow seemed to realize there was something wrong. The pain in Dean's head vanished and the shadow reeled away from him, lashing out at Anna and the others with long, dark arms. They danced out of his way, and the old man laughed a wheezing, consumptive laugh. Then it grabbed the woman with the rosary and pulled her toward it, and she began to melt into the shadow again, her panicked prayer growing louder.

_Shit. Not well enough. Need to--_

"Sam! Shoot it!"

Sam didn't hesitate. He fired, and Dean felt a stinging spray of salt on his face and arms. It was a good shot; the shadow burst into wisps, releasing the woman with the rosary from its grasp. It reformed almost immediately, but some of the wisps escaped and shifted into other ghosts.

It had no more control. The others broke away easily, filling the circle and pacing around angrily, murmuring amongst themselves and glaring at the diminishing shadow. The air around Dean grew colder and colder as more of them appeared, and he began to shiver uncontrollably.

_So many of them_, he thought, looking up at the tight, menacing ring they formed above him and the shadow.

And every single one of them was really fucking pissed.

One more broke free -- a man in a long white doctor's coat -- and Dean blinked in surprise.

The shadow was gone. In its place was a man with stooped shoulders and a grizzled beard. He looked around, scowling and bewildered, and tried to back away. But the others closed around him, muttering and hissing, reaching for him with pale hands. They pulled at his gnarled hair, at his rough clothes and scrawny limbs, and he began to scream. They only pressed closer, their voices louder and angrier, a seething, squirming mass, and his screams rose.

Then there was a brilliant flash and a rush of cold, so sharp and sudden it felt like somebody had dumped ice water over Dean, and they were gone.

Sam was at his side in an instant. "Are you okay? Dean, are you--"

"Yeah." He coughed, his lungs still smarting from the cold, and pushed Sam away. "I'm fine."

"It worked, man. It worked. They're gone."

"Yeah, I know." It was strange, some small part of his mind thought, that he was so sure. But the room felt different now, and he was willing to bet that the entire hotel felt different. Dean closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply. "So, not such a dumb plan after all?"

Sam laughed. "Whatever. Still the dumbest plan ever. C'mon, let me help you up."

"Nah." Dean waved his hand. The thought of how much the slightest motion would hurt his leg was enough to make the wooden floor feel damn comfortable. "I'm fine here."

~

Sam shut the door quietly behind him as he left the yellow room. The hallway was cold; he could feel the draft from the broken window in the Kaufmans' room. As he passed by the piano room, Sam paused in the doorway. Through the tall windows the sun was shining, blinding and brilliant on the snow under a clear blue sky. The piano was closed and silent.

Sam stood there for a few seconds, then shrugged and continued through the lobby into the restaurant. Brooke and David were sitting at a table, steaming mugs of coffee before them.

Brooke looked up when Sam came in. "How's Dean?"

"Asleep," Sam replied, stifling a yawn. He pulled out a chair and sat down heavily, rubbed his hands over his face and rested his elbows on the table. "Rick says the snow plow should make it up here soon."

And with it would likely come the county sheriff. The phones and powers had come back on about mid-morning. They had cleaned up all the rooms except the Kaufmans' and agreed on a story that, while not exactly believable, was at least something to keep the cops busy for a while.

_Long enough to give me and Dean time to get the hell out of here_, Sam thought, then immediately felt a pang of guilt. He wasn't used to worrying about the people left behind to deal with the mess.

"Good." Brooke wrapped her hands around her mug and shivered. "I'm ready to leave."

"God, yes," David agreed. He looking out the window for a moment, squinting at the brightness, then turned back to Sam with a frown. "Is this... is this _normal_ for you?"

Sam laughed. "No. Yes. I guess so. You still think I'm crazy?"

David grinned sheepishly. "Well, yes, but for a totally different reason. You've really been doing this your entire life?"

"As long as I can remember," Sam said. He waited for the familiar twinge of annoyance and frustration, for the voice in his mind to whisper _but not by choice!_ But that voice was apparently just as tired of the rest of him, and it remained silent.

David shook his head. "At least I understand now why you never used to talk about your family. 'My life is a horror movie' isn't exactly something you share at freshmen orientation."

"It's the family business," Sam said with a shrug. "It's not that bad."

"Better you than me."

There was a brief silence, then Brooke said, "I'm glad I called you, Sam. We know what happened to Pepper now, and that means a lot. And I don't even want to think about what would've happened if you hadn't been here."

"I just wish we..." Sam let his voice trail off. He could still see Mrs. Kaufman, the glass in her hands and blood on her skin, and he could still feel the crushing cold of the spirit in his body. "We did what we could."

"You saved our lives," Brooke said, "and it's terrible that you both got hurt doing it."

"We'll be fine," Sam said, picking at the bandages on his hand. He forced a smile and added, "Well, except for the fact that I'll have to listen to Dean bitch about not being able to walk for the next month or two."

"Where are you heading next?" David asked. "You have a plan?"

"Nah. We'll have to take it easy for a while, but after that? No idea."

"What about in June?" Brooke asked.

"June?" Sam repeated, blinking in confusion. He didn't even know where they were going to be in a few days, much less in a few months. "Why June?"

Brooke and David exchanged glances. "We'd like you to come to the wedding, if you can make it. Your brother, too."

"Oh." Surprised, Sam looked at each of them in turn. "I, uh... I mean, I don't know where we'll be--"

"Think about it," Brooke said gently, reaching out to touch Sam's arm. "It's good to see you, Sam, and we don't want to lose touch again."

"I -- yeah." Sam looked down at the table awkwardly. "Just tell me when and where, and we'll... we'll try to make it."

"Good." Brooke smiled. "And we promise to hold it in a place that doesn't have any ghosts."

"Well, if you _promise_," Sam said, laughing and looking up, "how can I resist that invitation?"

"Look." David pointed toward the window at the far end of the restaurant. Across the parking lot, at the edge of the forest, a snow plow was emerging from the trees. The orange light on its top flashed and a wave of snow was thrown up before it. "Cavalry's here."

Sam sat back in his chair and yawned. "Yeah. Guess it is."


	13. Epilogue

They drove south, away from the snow.

Just after sunset Sam pulled into a motel on the edge of Albuquerque, a rundown place with half the letters on the sign worn off and a handful of cars in the parking lot. The room was overheated and stank of cigarette smoke, and after a few restless minutes warily eyeing the teal and orange coyote silhouettes adorning the walls, Sam left Dean flipping through the channels on the grainy television and went to find dinner.

Outside the air was cool and smelled like desert and exhaust, and the evening hummed with the sounds of the nearby interstate. He walked a few blocks until he found a take-out Chinese restaurant tucked in amongst the garages and pawn shops. Round-bellied Buddhas mingled with spiny saguaro cacti on the window, and the restaurant was empty except for a wizened old woman behind the counter. She didn't speak a word of English and she stared at Sam's bandaged hand suspiciously, but she understood his pointing well enough. The order taken, she hurried through the swinging door into the kitchen, shouting in a mixture of Chinese and Spanish.

Sam sat down on a red lacquered chair by the door, closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall. The cuts on his hand and forearms itched, and the bruises on his chest ached with every movement. He never thought he would be grateful to have Dean incapacitated, but right now there was nothing Sam wanted to do more than find a quiet place to hole up and sleep for about a week.

They'd crashed for a few hours after a visit to the hospital in Granby and a chat with the cops -- during which Sam had played dumb while silently thanking whatever god was listening that nobody asked to search the car -- and then they'd left, winding out of the mountains on roads that were plowed but still a frozen, wintry mess. Sam was pretty sure the cops didn't believe the story they had concocted, but he was also pretty sure it would be a good long while before they found the Kaufmans' bodies, if they ever found them at all.

He was close to dozing off when the old woman finally emerged from the kitchen. She handed him a large brown paper bag, carefully counted the cash he gave her, and bid him farewell with a dismissive wave of her hand. Sam stepped onto the street and walked slowly back to the motel, his exhaustion increasing with every step. There were only a few other cars parked outside the motel, and through the office window he could see the man behind the counter smoking and staring at the evening news.

Sam pushed the door open. "Chinese." He held up the paper bag, then closed and locked the door behind him. "Hope you're hungry."

"Yeah, okay." Dean had the remote in hand and was still flipping through the channels, but his crutches were lying on the bed rather than leaning against the wall as they'd been when Sam left, and there was an open newspaper on the bed beside him.

Sam began taking the food out of the bag. "You're not supposed to be walking," he said. It came out sounding a lot more scolding than he intended, and when Dean glared at him, Sam smiled apologetically.

As he leaned over to hand a carton of food to Dean, one of the headlines on the paper caught his eye.

It wasn't front page news. Barely noticeable. Just a single-column story on page five.

_Vegas abduction victims die in comas._

Sam's heart skipped and his breath caught in his throat. Glancing at Dean quickly, he put the food down, picked up the paper, and sat down on the edge of the other bed.

There wasn't much information in the article. No new leads. No suspects. The cops and doctors were still baffled. The girls had never woken up. Memorial services were scheduled.

"Dean." Sam folded the paper and set it aside. He kept his voice low, almost a whisper. "There was nothing we could have done."

After a moment, Dean shrugged slightly. "Not at that point, anyway."

"There was nothing _you_ could have done." Sam leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, silently willing Dean to look at him. "There was no way you could have stopped it. No way you could have stopped it from jumping into you, no way you could have kept it from doing what it did."

Dean toyed with the remote control, tracing his index finger between the buttons, and didn't answer.

"They use people just like tools," Sam went on. "That's what they do. They have complete control. You know how it works, Dean. You can't fight off a possession."

"Dad did."

Dean spoke so quietly for a second Sam thought he'd misheard. Then the words sank in and he felt a cold knot form in his stomach.

"Dean..."

"He _did_," Dean said, more forcefully. "We would be dead if he hadn't."

"That was different."

"How?" Dean's voice rose angrily. He looked like he wanted to jump up and pace around but was fidgeting in frustration instead. "How was that different? Just because it was ripping me apart from the inside instead of sucking the life out of pretty girls it grabbed off the street? There is no difference. It wanted the same thing. They all want the same thing. To hurt people, to cause pain because it's so fucking enjoyable for them. It wanted to hurt those girls, to scare them and terrorize them and _hurt_ them, because that's what it likes. That's what it does for _fun_."

"Dean, don't--"

Dean talked right over him, not even pausing. "It was having the time of its life. It was fucking getting _off_ on scaring them, always knowing exactly how far to go, how much to take before the kids were nothing but empty shells. It knew they were going to die. _I_ knew they were going to die, and I knew there wasn't a thing I could do to fix it. That's what is does. It sucks them dry because it's the best thing it knows, the biggest rush of power and euphoria and I could feel _every goddamned second of it_."

For a moment, Dean looked like he was going to say more, but he only hit the mattress with his fist and collapsed back against the headboard, his eyes closed.

"Dean, I can't--"

"Forget it, Sammy." There were dark circles under his eyes and his freckles stood out against pale skin, and his expression went from furious to embarrassed so quickly Sam barely saw the change. "Just -- never mind. Fucking pain meds talking."

With a sigh, Sam shook his head and walked over to the bathroom. He found the first aid kit just as he'd left it, still zipped up, the prescription bottles still inside. He shook out a few pills and filled a plastic cup with water, then down again on the edge of Dean's bed.

"Lack of pain meds, you mean. You haven't taken anything all day," he said, trying to sound disapproving rather than worried. When Dean opened his mouth to respond, Sam held up his hand. "And don't give me that crap about saving the pills for when we need them. _You_ need them right now, so quit being such a stubborn ass and take your goddamned medicine."

He pressed the pills into one of Dean's hands and shoved the plastic cup into the other, sloshing water on both of their hands.

Dean glared at him but swallowed the medicine and shoved the cup back at Sam. "Satisfied, nurse?"

"It wasn't you."

Dean looked down awkwardly.

"You couldn't have--"

"I _should_ have been able to."

"We can't save everyone, Dean." Sam set the plastic cup on the nightstand and ran his hand through his hair. "If there's one thing I know about this fucked-up job of ours it's that we are _way_ outnumbered, and sometimes we're outmatched too. Sometimes the only thing we can do is try to balance it out."

Dean looked at Sam and raised an eyebrow. "Since when did you become Dr. Phil's newest apprentice?"

"Dean, I'm serious," Sam insisted. "Those girls died, but we saved all those people in Colorado. You and your stupid hopping around on a broken leg and crappy plan. The Alvarezes, the guests, my friends -- they would probably be dead if we hadn't been there, or if that spirit hadn't thought there was something... something _whatever_ about you."

Dean didn't say anything at first. Then he exhaled a small, short laugh and shook his head. "God, that was a crappy plan. What the fuck were we thinking?"

Smiling, Sam stood and moved back to his own bed. "I don't know. Here," he said, passing a carton of noodles over to Dean, "you need to eat or those drugs will make you all weird."

"You should get a little white hat if you're going to keep up this nagging nurse routine." But Dean accepted the food and began to eat.

Sam watched him for a few moments, wondering if he should say more, but he decided to keep quiet rather than risk being disowned for excessive touchy-feely behavior. He took the remote from Dean and settled back on the bed, half-watching as he switched through the channels. News, weather, football, news, sitcoms. He stopped on a movie that looked vaguely familiar and set the remote down. Reaching for his own food, he stared past the television, through the blinds and out the window at the fading evening light. They could go east, he thought, head on over into Texas. They knew of a few places down by the border that were warm and safe, good for recuperating, good for not being bothered for a week or two.

"Um, Sam?"

He glanced at Dean, who pointed at the television.

As he watched, Jack Nicholson's grinning face filled the screen. "_Here's Jo--_"

Sam fumbled for the remote and jabbed the channel button so hard he cracked the plastic.


End file.
